Tags
Alex Carr-Malcolm poet, Alex Carr-Malcolm poetry, Alexandra Carr-Malcolm, death, depression, napowrimo, poetry, UK poet, Uk poetry, writing, Yorkshire poet
Another day, another dollar,
washing pots, preventing squalor.
Mundane tasks, day in, day out,
the meaning of life, what’s it all about?
She takes the knife from the dishwasher rack,
and dries it slowly, stopped in her tracks,
she stops to think by the kitchen sink –
what if, what if, what if?
To push the knife deep in my gut,
would it slip in, like a needle in butter
would it wrinkle, like a blunt knife tomato
or would it resist, like a half cooked potato
Would it be simple or would it be hard to
plunge deep the steel, its passage legato
would it feel cold or would it feel hot
should I do it, or should I not?
Would it induce an arterial spurt
like Pollock upon my cobwebbed wall dirt
or would it just ooze and be warm wet and sticky
would she fall to her knees looking pallid and sickly
The dog nudges past which jolts back to reality
and someone shouts through the closed kitchen door
‘Mum, where’s the remote for the cable TV?’
I dry up the knife and place it back in the drawer
What if, what if, what if?
© What if? 2015
by Alexandra Carr-Malcolm
Worldly Winds 