Other People's Lives (I.P.)

A kind of sombreness about the place...
sensed the moment we turned the key –
walked into the hall...its rooms, still
furnished; the owners, abroad, maybe;
we should have to ask the agent.
No one had lived here recently;
silvered sacs of sedulous spiders
on the window-ledge; a slight
stain where the rain had seeped in.

An inglenook fireplace – spattered
with pigeon-shit; mouse-droppings
lined the wainscot. We could only
imagine whose hand slightly turned
the brown, leather chair toward
the light, held the glass – left
on a table. Outside the window
the sun, pricked through the leaves

filled the emptiness between us,
and all these half-abandoned things;
walls, lined with shelves of books
stacked in their owner's order. Upstairs
by the bed, a broken string of pearls...
Love, perhaps, was interrupted here.
Would she come back, I wondered.
‘We can never know what happens
yesterday,’ he said...cupping
my face with his hands.