House 

3.20am. Inside this kitchen under emergency fluorescents.
Head in hands — elbows on polished, scratched aluminum.
I scan the clocks. Thinking I’m already tired for tomorrow —
the beige days that will come long at me again.

It’s almost so quiet. The hums of fridges, maybe rats outside 
on a feed. Hours ago, I called the lucky winning numbers
in the lounge for the weekly Friday night ‘Sex Offender Bingo’.
There were prizes of coat hangers, chocolate buttons and crisps.

They sleep above now in their soft walled rooms with thin duvets,
angry sticky wet dreams fogged by pound shop deodorant.
They can’t see me here, in tears. Freed by the prayers I whisper.
Men. We are all a flicked switch from black. A twitch from evil.