How You Might Know Me. Sabrina Mahfouz

      in the garage with a good client (sylvia)

      filled up with all sorts of shit

      boxes

      bricks and bricks of boxes

      building up to

      it’s all just a build up really isn’t it

      there’s nothing to keep us here but the anticipation

      no space in here

      why have extra space with no space in it

      beats me

      this one won’t beat me

      not a chance

      his hands are feathery

      couldn’t grip the bones of a glove

      probably why there’s a babylonian paper garden

      growing mould in this

      when he dies will it go to his wife

      she’ll sit on a mirror of her own tears

      sifting through white sheets

      get a paper cut

      suck the blood

      corner of her wedding ring

      a tray of timely memories

      drop fingertip to a photo she isn’t in

      rip it up, rip it all up, sleep.

      No sleep for me

      not for a few hours

      see who’s out

      see him he’s hunting for the

      stiletto stash

      plastic clear full

      only box here without a lid

      blue shoes give blisters

      red shoes rub the bunion

      I told him

      oh oh oh oh

      here we go today he’s decided red

      foot soak when I get in

      look, him holding them like slabs of tyre rubber

      tingling with motorway crash heat

      smile now sylvia

      taller now ay sylvia

      three and a half minutes to go

      two white strands in his black eyebrows

      all mine grey, ha but I have a dye kit

      he might be in a car when he dies

      twisting metal might make a washing line out of his membrane

      gross that would be gross he’s a nice man

      well not a bad man

      not one of the bad ones

      one of the worst ones

      he doesn’t take

      one minute to go

      there’s that beach again

      I will sunbathe there before I die

      really go there on a plane not just go go

      whenever I go

      go go go go go oh oh oh

      ah bunion fucking kills

      who invented pointy shoes

      asked my mum once who invented me

      she said no idea my petal

      but it must have been a very clever man

      so disappointed

      I wanted to have been invented by storm waves

      to protect them from the williwaw.

      living room lamp (sylvia)

      gather then lift their judgement cards

      fake-tanned botoxed faces on the telly

      telling sweating hesitants if they can last

      until next week, if their feet worked sufficiently

      hard to turn a scuffed rubber floor into fantasy

      for two minutes of tango salsa waltz foxtrot,

      women like sylvia lauding the costumes so glittery

      whispering feathers for life’s prime slots.

      sylvia has one hand around a warm wine glass

      when scott pushes swelled knuckles sinkingly

      into the settee, his beer can finished starts

      to raise himself up bowing to sylvia’s beauty

      asks may he have this dance hand out hopefully

      she shakes her head I’m sixty two scott, not

      some first date post-war teen or these sorts on tv

      whispering feathers for life’s prime slots.

      scott regards himself as a reverse human ballast

      conducting maximum electricity to sylvia’s body

      white wine always makes her weak she won’t last

      until next week or to the end of her argumentatively

      affectionate refusal, she dances drunk and clumsily

      the living room needs painting, now bright apricot