Last week, her main man, Dom,
scribbled a note in her cookery book
on page forty-two, ‘Poacher’s Stew’:
Sorry to go, but you know I can’t forgo
eating fish ‘n’ chips out of greasy paper
in terraced streets, at closing time.
PS I’ve pinched your malt vinegar

Driving rain soaks her shoulders
as Gortex lets her down. Her walking boots
do no better. She’s emerged from days fretting
indoors, tempted out by hazy sunshine. Kindly
weather doesn’t last. She should have known.
One plus, today’s deluge ensures she stays alone
on her slippery trek, up to the ridge, saddled high
above her fellside village. He’d always hated country
life: allotments, choir practice, animals, stinking
manure spread over dressed fields, cockerels’ cries
cracking open his eyes at daybreak. It’s my idea of hell.

After painting their front door pillar-box red,
with deliberate care he’d re-hung her horseshoe
on a rusty nail upside down. Spilling all
their thinning luck upon the ground.

Squelching back home, she sees a kite harried
by cawing crows, followed by a rainbow’s glow.
Recovered from grief, though not her hungry fury,
she curses Dom: hopes he’ll choke on fishbones.

©  

Ceinwen Haydon completed an MA in Creative Writing at Newcastle University in 2017. Her short stories and poetry have been widely published in web magazines and print anthologies. She is a Pushcart (2019 & 2020) and Forward Prize (2019) nominee.