You, an ex-girlfriend,

sit a ruler’s length down the bench from your foil,

reciting the prescribed lines as you try

to extract the last two months from his eyes.

First date awkwardness is charged with final date

intimacy, exposed when you let yourself cry

and he reaches to stroke your hand, breaking

character.

You repay the favour,

pat his freshly-cropped hair as the escalator

carries him down to the wrong platform (incidentally yours)

and you think of Paradise Lost and Lucifer

hurtling from Heaven and how he never

read that book. But then again, neither did you,

and the comparison is too harsh anyway.

After Ella Frears∎

Words by Hope Nicholson. Artwork by Faye Song.