Splitting The Ego With Mary

Among my mother's pansies,
down the ribbony path, squirrelled
behind the privet,
she slipped down her underwear.
Like a cat, watching
the pointing finger
instead of its subject,
I examined the polka-dots
measling the cotton
until she hoisted her hem,
lay in the grass
and tented her legs.

It was a baby mammal, curled and spineless
with a paintbrush-tuft of hair.
It sprang and gave at my stumpy touch,
teasing that it would lick me
up to the elbow.

For months I stared at the hive
of block-colour planes on my walls,
charting with those same stumps
the differences between us.
Flu-hot, rhythmic.

The door, the shriek. Later,
the kitchen knife, long as my femur.
The threat that cut short
my hands' sub-blanket expedition
in favour of daisy chains, cutlery,
scout knots. Oh Mary,
come back for the summer.
The string stings, I spill my food,
I stretch in disturbing ways, I tear
apart each furry stem,
but the mise en scene of your pinkness
does not distort.

Mary, I'm older now. Show me again.