Quiche

Pain is a basement café and all of us are scrubbing

our merciless scrub, said the lady in the bloody apron,

staring through me. I’d asked for a slice of quiche

with goat’s cheese and my finger was frozen on the sneezeglass.

Either I can be your mentor or you can wear pyjamas

the mechanic yelled over the racket in his workshop,

when I suggested egg white was no substitute for glue.

He climbed under the hood, and hasn’t come out since.

A fly on the wall is enough company for a lifetime

my mother insisted, while I stood above her on a stool

tending that fuse box. She wore black all the time now.

She kept spilling Lucozade on the dachshund in her lap.

I was out in the shed, reaching back to oil the hinges

that held my wings in position. It was hot work.

The last hour will be our worst, my wife said, and when I soared

our children were quick red ants leading her from the scene.