She soaks her body

Scrubbing and peeling layers of invisible dirt

Flushing away the undue haste

Of the last two days

Letting the shower taste her face her body

The weeks of anticipation

The grieved upon tears

The streaks of hair

The makeup gone wild

She carefully dries and scores every

Fibre and cell that clings to her flesh

Creasing and smoothing fresh sheets

On the altar where deeds were done that

She did not wish to remember

No hint of him and her to be left

The traitorous dogs of love to be expelled

Hounded down and cursed

She sighs and smiles at the rising dawn

Trying to avoid the ripped torn note in the bin

The dozen or so texts left

Because sorry I couldn’t stay

Was not enough

And the picture of him with the other

And two small ones

Rebounds in her head

That she had found fallen from the

Rushed and hurried clothes at the bottom of the bed

She says to herself

No more unicorns and rainbows

No more smooth-talking Harry’s

I’m done

Until the doorbell rings insistently

The clamouring poring urgency she had felt

Of him of her comes back

She opens the door a scowling frame of discontent

He asks for the picture she must have found

The one of him and that other with the little ones

The ones she says you so conveniently forgot

Never he says she they are precious to me

My sister and her kids

Left without a father because he went off with someone else

She is bereft

Her tears reignite

As emotions slam one into another

And she lets him hold her

He the soldier of her dreams

Who has become so much more than

A one- night stand