Swallowing Barbed Wire

I couldn't believe what came out of your mouth.
Couldn't stop the killing words
that choked, strangled
and stopped time. Stopped life.
Couldn't hit rewind, unsend, delete,
and live on as though they hadn't been spoken.

You would not budge. Repent. Relent.
And for once I couldn't fix, fudge or wish it away,
redeem it with redoubled efforts and dogged good behaviour.
This time I can't go to sleep and wake to find it gone.
It's here. For good.

The blackness came then.
Cold, hard, heavy.
Just sank and sank deep into my guts.
And stayed there. Molten wicked emptiness.

I made noises like a wild animal caught in a trap.
It wasn't a human sound.
My stomach burnt with acid grief.
My feet couldn't feel the floor.
Foetal slump and curl was all I could manage.
Why's it so cold? Even though it was baking outside.
Cold from the inside where that blackness lay molten, like oil slick.

(II)
Clinical room, snickety snick sharp.
No tissues for tears here – just trendy bottled water
and a single white freesia in a Habitat vase -
witness to the business of getting it over with.

Beyond the floor-to-ceiling window was St Paul's.
Holiness, looking in on my unholiness.
Again, a sun streaming in, magnified by glass.
But that dead chill creeps still through my veins.
It's made itself at home there now.

The Suits arrive. All sheaves and bustle and fixed grin cordiality.
Poison in a secretarial smile and a limp handshake.
I spin downwards into the web of understatements.
Polite violence in small words that trip off the tongue.

Just as I thought I would crack it ends.
In a moment I am out in the street – city life at midday
storming past with scant regard for the fresh lacerations in my heart.
I walk and move, camouflaged by the rhythm of London.
And no one knows that I am dead.

(III)
So it ticks on. Week on week of aloneness.
Our home - now pictureless walls that echo as it empties out.
The dump becomes a favourite haunt -
grave for a lifetime's worth of objets d'art
that now beggars affection.
Life, curiously efficient in a place setting for one,
grows finally silent.

Accusations grow fat and alive, and comfortable in the telling.
Slick furniture, slick suits, slick case. Open and shut.
I look at you now across the shiny Conran table, and don't know who you are.
What just happened in a lifetime? Everything, and nothing.
Each consuming moment that gripped us once.
I do. I will. I promise.
The children. (oh the children!)
The first steps.
Nights up with the 3am feed and the chicken pox.
Make or break exams and the bad boyfriends.
Angst in rejections and the thrill of glory.
Our big successes and the near disasters.
Holidays and funerals. Anniversaries and the daily grind.
Sickness and health, for richer for poorer
all woven into my be all and end all
till death do us part.
You take the last, unspeakable step.
Everything, now nothing.

There's a distinct taste of metal in my mouth,
as though I'd swallowed miles of barbed wire.
Congratulations, said the sharp suits. It's over.
I drive all the way to Basildon to congratulate myself.