It began in the morning. Perhaps she’d dropped
a teacup. Breathed in, or out of place. The voices
rose, plumed like milk, and complaints swirled

into the day. Perhaps she’d started to breathe again,
for it began again not long before lunch. Maybe
she’d scorched him with a white hot pan: the smell

of lemon sole lofting across a shared fence. Perhaps
it was the clatter of a fumbled tureen: knuckle stew
pink with cartilage, bittercress and rue. Or softer,

the scrape of her spoon in a swirling bisque, citrine
and thick with shrimp. Softer still, the wheeze
of a fat satsuma, her thumbnail biting on spritzy skin.

The light glanced once off a window shutting,
and the voices rose again: a bitter flurry which lifted
yolk-breasted birds off the fence. Brought neighbours

running, spilling teas, punching numbers, ill at ease.
They found her – slender, astonished by cutlery,
the pleasures of fennel in a bone china cup.