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Helen Buckingham

Mid-life Chrysalis


Sunday afternoon. The bath is running. The sun is pouring in. And I'm stuck somewhere in between, in the greyish-green slough of my bedsit. The bed bit's already beckoning me back but I manage, for now, to resist. I enter the furiously damp bathroom: turn off the hot tap; overrun the cold. Reach for the essential oil with the unfathomable label, and, shaken somewhat by a sudden Alice-like compulsion to try it for taste, empty in the lot. Gingerly I shed my dank woollen dressing gown, balancing it at the ready over the dripping bathroom handle. And ease myself back to the relative security of the horizontal.

the taps fall silent
through our wall, his baritone
lowering me in