Merry Christmas Archie

 

I just don’t know what’s got into you. The Christmas Office Party?  

Contempt suspended, as exhaling smoke towards his face,

She sniffed, her mouth a coalesce of distaste

And scorn. Oh god! You’re wearing aftershave!.

You’re Fifty Two for heavens sake and look absurd in that                       

Shapeless ancient suit. I know I do he thought,

And from the too tight jacket, raised stitch, in cream

With broad lapels, he smoothed a crease.

 

I know I look absurd and cheap. I know I do.

 

But how he looked he knew, was barely half 

As foolish as the reason why, he simply had

To go. He clutched no words, nor wit that sufficed

To unfold how it had begun … the prosaic office

Morning  months before, and Linzy, bringing round the mail.

Two invoices for you Archie, that first time she had used his name

And how her hand, he knew, had remained

Just long enough for him to believe

 

I am not absurd and cheap. I know I’m not.

 

How then, that day had been a day of files misfiled

Where the order of the alphabet inclined itself to be fluid

And unreasonable. Dockets and delivery notes misplaced,

His In Tray, untenanted by five fourteen each

Day for eighteen years, lay overflowing..

That night he’d dreamed an Archie dream of daring

Pirates, poets, cowboys, buccaneers, and the roguish

Shrug he gave as she kissed away the blood from the cutlass slash.

I know I can be heroic. I know I can.

 

A heart-dotted i of Linzy on the party sign-up list had

Brought him here to Players. Two hours of fabricating fun and

Cheer, as panic pinched and desolation gnawed he

Feigned indifference to enquire where others were.

Above the fomenting roar, a half heard bawl that Frank

Was in the toilet being  sick, Linzy gone to see her boyfriend in his band.

Gone to see her boyfriend in his band.

A single sentence and an entire world slipped from his hand.

 

I knew I was a fool. I knew I was.

 

The kitchen table, salt cellar upturned,

Idly moving the grains into a heart. A full life stretched

Emptily ahead; tomorrow the Tesco run and walk her dog,

Insurance on the caravan to pay, and the garden,

Where the weeds for months had grown, to tend.

He swept the table clean and 

Faltering, shuffled slowly up the stairs, where whistling

Snores, not unlike derision, lay ungently, waiting.