By Cait Price
Like all types of grief,
the death of a relationship
demands a water burial.
I call it drowning.
We are watching its floating corpse,
my mother and I,
caught in the weeds
‘You never really had much in common’ my mother
prods it with a stick
'and five years is a long time to spend with someone’
the body turns over
in the water, nudging against the bank like a pet
'he must have just been unfulfilled.’ One last jab, dispassionate,
and the body pushes out
into the current.
My mother turns to me and sighs-
she remembers what it is like to be skinned,
to leave the house with all your nerves
on display.
Out on the water, the body rocks with the tide.
Its eyes roll loose
and sink into the sea-bed
two glass marbles
knocking against each other in clouds of sand