Returning from the bathroom, he finds the lounge freshly vacant,
still warm with bonhomie: a small pyramid of cigarette ash settling
itself in a geometric cut-glass dish, flutes of cherry prosecco
birthing bubbles, a wipe of candy lipstick shining on the rim
of one, a bent-back paperback breathing itself into shape again,
the partition into the dining room sticky with fingerprints
at thigh-height of chocolate parfait, a demure berg of cork bobbing
in a half-drunk merlot, an errant faux-pearl button upturned
and winkled behind the ankle of the taupe newly upholstered
armchair. The talk of how much the chair cost yet hangs
in the air, along with the comment of the woman from down
the road that his responses were most salient, a mere moment
before he’d excused himself to then wonder, while he relieved
himself, while he glanced at the smiling family trio snapped
and clip-framed on a plane of damp sand, what she meant by salient.
He now sits on the edge of the ruby chaise longue, watches
the television mutely pedal down the closing minutes of the year,
the silent fireworks spraying over the city, bouquets of unsmellable
colour, the camera panning slowly over a dark ocean of faces
he doesn’t know, as they traipse through a song they don’t know.