Tom Burgis - 'How She Changed Her Face'

How She Changed Her Face

How she changed her face from curves to angles,
dressed in nothing but an odd pair of socks -
one white, one pink and tight over her ankles -
I still can't tell, though I caught something
like sorrow in the wrinkles of her nose,
like the springs of a stopped clock.

Her kid in the incubator
looked, to the medical eye,
like a stunned sperm in a box;
a short thing in a slack white hat,
a wire from each nostril, almost
short enough to be just weight,
or the exquisite groin of Venus
from an alabaster block.

Throwing on a duffel coat
and leaving on the socks
she pulled on a fag and thought;
the window cut to pieces by a lace curtain;
the smell of toast filling up the morning.

© Tom Burgis