Marla’s bookshelves are lined
with paperbacks –
classics, poetry, romance, crime,
the spines bent and broken,
pages yellow and weak.
I curl up under a lamp,
reading a book called Moon Tiger,
mouthing the words
like a prayer
while Marla sits looking into her lap,
suddenly spent,
quiet,
withdrawn.
I have no idea what she is feeling
and this not knowing makes me shift in my
chair constantly.
Eventually her phone pings
and it rouses her –
her mind wriggling back into the room.
Bedtime.
At the door she turns.
Are you going home?
Yes. Soon.
I hold the book aloft.
She nods in a sort of expressionless way
and heads upstairs,
flushes the loo,
shuts her bedroom door.
In the half-lit room
I sit with Moon Tiger
until sleepiness creeps through me
and I can’t keep my eyes open
for the last chapters.
Electricity buzzes in the room.
Something crackles.
But Marla does not return.
She stays asleep.
And here I am alone in her home,
reading her books,
pretending to be someone I am not.
She will see through me tomorrow.
But I suppose that doesn’t matter tonight.
I have a bed
and the doors in this house
are locked tight.
I can’t go home.
So I am staying.