THE TIME BETWEEN                                                           

Photograph in fading monochrome,

pleasant flat the home of a twenties child

used to living alone, her

wedding on the sideboard, same

glass and easel frame (is that the name?)

since the time between began.

 

That photograph has special place

among the scattered this, that, the other

face of issue since. A composition

shutting out the grinning guests, not

left in some drawer with all the rest

collected in the time between.

 

Why this one of the pair, staring at

tomorrow, care-free, seemingly?

Why was it picked from the pile, all

smiles as they turn to look behind,

wave to the past, a future to find

somewhere in the time between?

 

Half way through the time between the

killer crab sucked the marrow of her man –

though there was no together in that time:

too much poison spread on every word for

any going back; a fly on the wall, I heard

the quiet of the time between.

 

Is this display an atonement, a

recognition for a moment that they’d

entrapped each other in love’s leftovers?

Nobody’s fault, an honest mistake that

thousands of lovers every day make.

They set alight the time between.

 

The picture stands proud, seen by all who

come to tea; I tend to think

there’s more to this than meets the eye –

perhaps in the steps from sideboard to chair

there lies as much as she can bear

to remember of the time between.

 

My mind wanders, imagining her post-war

thoughts at the beginning of the time between:

who knows what the future holds –

I may grow old and grey – but it’s

not unfair for now to say that I am,

I think, beautiful. As a daughter not

sufficiently dutiful (how I was slapped!) but

otherwise unscathed, aware I turn heads,  

I speak and am heard, am ready for the

new world, ready to deliver life into it, to

observe my vows, to wash the past away;

to ask the camera to catch the last laugh

which we shall claim for our fresh beginning.

And for our ending too.

Let it be true.

 

These were, I hope, something like her thoughts.

She has grown old and grey, though her beauty’s stayed,

shining, just, through dimmed eyes touch-of-blue…

       she

looks across the room, takes a mirror from her bag,

a brief glimpse, a thin smile, her shoulders sag

as she falls again, gently, into the time between.