I was washing heirloom dishes in her stone house when I first felt you slip.

A ping and then a hurt. You were a secret then, raspberry speckled toilet paper,

stuffed inside my pants. 
I rode the 333 express to Brontë, but I was in no hurry.

Rough waves broke. Hope and anchor held, the surrender seemed to stop.

I smoked half a rolled cigarette there, on the wall by the sand, and didn’t fall. 
It was after midnight when you really came away.

No hesitation in the rip: pain emptied me. Half-bent in a frosted glass shower,

I fished you from the threads.
There you were, an unformed thing, already loved by me.

A breathless, beatless, ember uncradled to the drain.

Sticky, I pushed you down.
Metallic aubergine and sick soaked through my skin,

in a place that was not our home.

So, I washed myself scrubbing hard and quick with
strawberry shampoo, sweet and new, and not meant for cleaning babies.