strawberries

she is using the back of a hammer

to shatter the ice sheath –

rain lolling, like the diffuse pulp

from some vital paper pulsed

into sleeted vagary, like goose down

in the stolid grey, towards the courtyard

I look at, between her demure blows,

from my balcony window –

that keeps us from them: the crystal-

-addled strawberries I bought god-

-knows-when, on sale for another girl

who was allergic –

and the courtyard fountain is as empty

as the withered centre of the ancient fruit

which, out of propriety and maybe for liking me

a little, she swallows – whether failed efforts

endear more than do successes I don’t know,

is saying all the wrong things a good way

to do it I don’t know,

but I am thinking such things while she is here,

that couch pillow with floral tracery in her lap,

nice perfume on her pale, elaborately-veined wrists,

her in-breaths cold, her tongue and her teeth

berry-reddened, humming a children’s song

that buffets my heart so unbearably, smiling –

that we were both twenty-three this summer

is the overwrought coincidence

on the shoulders of which we arrive

at the cliff top of the stony dark –

I water the peace lilies, tear the hairs

from my hands at the thought of thumbing

the glitter flecks around her eyes –

the flimsy plastic punnet, frozen so long,

lies half-disintegrated on the countertop

in a little oblong of water: while she washes

her face I break up the countless flakes,

turn the laminex into a huge jigsaw board,

dip a few in the water and taste them –

they taste of strawberries – before the archway 

at my back says I think I will stay next time,

and the sound of a returned hammer happens.