The Same Deep Water as You

The Cure were a perfect soundtrack for that out-of-synch feeling,
the dripping tap that was too much effort to tighten, the ghosting
effect of a kitchen strip light that heightened a bad hair day when
the fruit bowl offered a bruised apple and there was no appetite
for a dinner you couldn't be bothered to cook. It was the beginning
of the weekend, the phone was silent so you pressed play and they
weren't poppy enough to get you on your feet but not gloomy
enough for you to sulk to so you tapped fingers and let the room
fill with swirls of guitars and a plaintive voice where love was always
a prelude to heartbreak and you imagined life was always elsewhere.
No one else could have lonely Friday nights, solo Saturdays, the dismal
Sunday sentences of teenage years where dark scribbles in the margins
of homework were hints of poems, lines setting a course for a life yet to be lived.

Emma Lee’s publications include The Significance of a Dress (Arachne, 2020) and Ghosts in the Desert (IDP, 2015). She co-edited Over Land, Over Sea, (Five Leaves, UK, 2015), is Poetry Reviews Editor for The Blue Nib, reviews for magazines and blogs at http://emmalee1.wordpress.com.