The Night We Stole a Full-Length Mirror

​

I'd have walked straight past if you hadn't said

Look at the moon and held my head in your hands 

and turned it slowly round to face a skip,

its broken skyline of one-legged chair, 

ripped out floor, till I saw it moving

- so slow, so bright - across the silver glass.

We stood there for ages, a bit drunk

staring at the moon hanging there

as if it were for sale and we an old couple 

weighing it up but knowing in our hearts

it is beyond us - A cat jumps out 

and before we know it we're stealing back to my flat,

the great thing like a masterpiece in our hands, 

its surface anxious with knees and knuckles, 

the clenched line of your jaw and your lips 

kissing the glass over and over with curses.

You lean it so it catches the bed and me,

I nudge it with my toe so it won't hold my head.

Switching off the light my skin turns blue

and when you come in on the scene and we see

ourselves like this we start to move like real

professionals and my head, disowned and free, 

watches what our bodies are doing and somewhere 

the thought I can't believe we weren't made for this

and I can't stop looking even though the ache 

in my throat is growing and soon there will be tears

and I can hear you looking and I know what you're 

looking at and it doesn't matter but it isn't me.

You left me behind in a bar in Copenhagen St,

the one with the small red lamps and my face hung

a hundred identical times along the stained wall

invoking like some old speaking doll

the dissatisfaction I come back and back to

and there's this really pretty Chinese waitress

you're trying not to look at while I'm talking to you.

Then you get up and I'm left alone so I lift my head to look 

at the man who's been staring at me since I walked in. 

He's huge and lonely and lifts his glass and nods

and all the women along the wall break into smiles.

Then you're back and whispering your breasts your breasts 

and your hands are scrambling up the wet stone

of my back and I imagine the lonely man is there

behind the silver screen sipping his drink,

his eyes thick and moist behind the glass;

I know he's waiting to catch my eye but I won't

be seen to know I'm being watched. Not

till it's over and we collapse, all of a sudden

and awkward, and the room becomes itself again, 

filling the mirror with its things and our two faces

staring in, calm and dull and self-absorbed.

Then we look at each other and are surprised

as if we weren't expecting to find the other

here and the smile is quick, like a nod slipped in 

between two conspirators returned to the world

of daylight, birdsong, the good tug of guilt

before we tilt the mirror up-, sky-, heaven-ward.