you’ve got to see yourself when you’re not looking

you’ve got to look at yourself as though you’re someone else

how can you do that

/

I sat on the back step of the house that wasn’t mine anymore

I sat there as night-time filled the backyard

all the green weeds and the flowers I’d planted

and the vegetables dying in the plots that Lenny had dug

were all disappearing into the dark

and I tried to see myself

to see what Lenny saw and what my mother saw

and what the baby saw

I saw my hands on Lenny’s skin

and my hands holding the baby’s tiny hands

and I saw my arms around my mother

helping her into bed and all her ruined life like sweat on her skin

and I saw my face against Lenny’s face

on our pillows in our bed in our house that wasn’t ours anymore

and I saw my baby’s face still raw from being inside me pressed into my soft belly

and I saw my arms red from the hot water in the trough

and my hands wringing out the sheets and hanging them on the clothesline

I saw my face rounded on the side of an empty bottle

and staring at me from the window of the Rising Sun Hotel

I saw my face bruised by the back of my father’s hand

and I saw my face kissed by Lenny

I saw my face in the black glass of the kitchen window when the night was late

and I was sat there my hands on my knees and my hair hanging down

and the baby crying in the front room

I saw my face the way I’d never seen it and the way I’d always seen it

and I looked out into the backyard

where the washing on the clothesline flapped like a bird against the cold of the sky

and that was all I saw

/

I don’t remember the next days

just Mrs Kennedy feeding me the good stuff

me not much of myself just in pieces

and the looks of neighbours

like sharpened knives when I shut the house behind me

and left for good

/

I left the key in the door

I never went back

nobody lived there anymore

Seven

SEVEN

CHRISTIE in a narrow lane

Reek of piss

Junkies’ leavings

Shine of puddles

the trains went by on the Upfield line behind Lenny’s sister’s house

I was welcome in the house at dinner time

and I could lay the baby down to sleep at night

I’d sing him a song but I knew he was forgetting who I was

they pushed him to church on Sundays

but I wouldn’t go

Lenny’s sister pushed the pram like the fucking baby was hers

I laughed

I said if it was hers it must have been an immaculate conception

/