Peter Butler

Love on the Rocks

basking
on the rocks
seashells

She prefers fish, so I feed her Dover sole, shrimps and langoustines which she finishes at speed, without cutlery or sauces, as we run through Elgar’s Sea Pictures, all of which she knows, some she sings. Waist up she’s uninhibited (more circumspect elsewhere), and I put a rug on her shoulders in public, draping round her neck the string of shells I buy daily at the kiosk.

She teases me. I’m shy. I say it’s just I’ve never had anybody quite like her before. At this point she says she wants to arrange some further seduction. Third rock on the right, she specifies. I tell her fine by me. So we check the bay for speedboats and trawler nets before she heads for home, waving her usual silver-grey goodbye.

Back at the car, I prepare an announcement. My Nan has offered to buy the rings, mother insists on a church wedding. Only my father is unsure. He wonders why, sometimes, she walks kind of funny.

together
at the alter
oceans apart