In Her Kitchen

She'll not get over him.
The weekly therapy
forty quid a time
what a rip off she says,
filling the kettle.
She's giving things up again.
Paring down her life.
Last time it was caffeine
all she could offer, the thin soup
of fruit tea.
I couldn't keep my eyes
off the swilling pink gravel
in the bottom of my cup.
This time she tells me
wheat, dairy, alcohol.
The kid's his image,
look at that. He even sounds
like him. She looks out
where the rabbits run free
in the garden.
I blocked up their burrows
she tells me,
couldn't catch the little sods.
Some things you can't forget,
she told me her teenage rituals,
towels around the toilet,
fingers in her throat. Her mother
knew, did nothing.
I don't want to ask her
how it's going. I don't want to hear
how she's wasting herself.