First, fumigate

Your cell walls fresh-free

of their love.

 

Second.

 

Odious

poison barbed

bitter nothings

must be dumbly plucked from each pink pore,

thrown to landfill,

labelled 'Hazardous biowaste, may cause hideous burns'.

 

Third, make re-chaste your newly bleach-scoured bone and blotted clean flesh 

with a sore blessing of Domestos and cloves.

 

something new something old something stolen something dead

 

Fourth, hasten hair growth with sea kelp supplements

Pretend pretend pretend they work with a flick of your peeling wrist and a roll of your ash-dry eyes

Cover your scalp with a mane that they have never knotted or tenderly mangled, 

the two of you ashen with that skippy, gleeful dread.

 

Finally, a crown of polished teeth, doesn't matter whose, meandrous and chipped, 

greased until your elbows chafe

 

so everyone knows she has been sterilised