Loving London

Loving London

It didn't matter to him
that her skin, smattered like a tube map, woke up ugly and raw,
that he could not remember the names of any of the routes
or the full stops of her tongue and temper.
He never fell asleep before the end of the line.

He never closed his eyes as she pulled in, lilting and full,
spreading her passengers out like crosswords all over London.
He never wished he was elsewhere
when he smelt how hard her day had been.

He never read her like the Sunday papers
bunched up under his arm.
When he soaked and scrubbed her old back in the bath,
the blues, pinks, browns and yellows leaked out from her
like a broadsheet he always read,
like a stop he always ran to.