ALLEN KEY

By Hope Savage

We spent a morning

trying to build a house,

inside our house,

that we want her to call home.

It looked perfect

in the staged sepia pictures.

A bed used by Tabithas,

and Oscars and Sebastians.

In our terraced Scouse house

there was swearing.

‘I am holding piece number 9,

but where are the G screws?’

‘If you say bolt nuts to me

one more fucking time,

I am going to lose my mind.’

‘Yer ma’s a fucking bolt nut.’

I turn the big light on

in the pink room and stare

at the wooden house bed,

amazed we made it here.

But here is still only us, a decade on

and the tough has been so constant

my mind struggles to contemplate the good.

The out of reach-ness of it all.

You stare with me.

Two ragged-armed dolls,

you with one eye, me losing my stuffing,

ready to stitch ourselves back together.

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