Easter Lilies

I drop a sugar cube into the glass, watching it fizz up through the cheap vodka and warm champagne. You give me that crooked grin, arguing over some half-read paperback while the room fills with the smell of garlic and damp masonry.

the sauce is bubbling on the stove, a thick, heavy muck that spits over the rim, hitting the hot iron ring with a sharp, wet hiss. that sound, that relentless, miniature steam-valve drills right into the centre of the ear. on the table, two mismatched crystal glasses with swans etched into the sides. The Cabernet is breathing, but we’re hitting the champagne cocktails first because why not start the evening already drunk.

then the room shifts under the weight of the liquor, and the steam from the pot becomes a grey fog swallowing some village in Northern Ireland. black hedgerows closing in like a fist, Easter lilies splitting the frozen mud, a relentless rain that never quite stops.

I wrap myself in a country I’ve never seen, your country, adopting its ghosts just to hide from my own. and then, the hissing stops as the sauce catches on the bottom of the pot. the kitchen comes back, flat and quiet. the chair across from me is empty, there is only one glass on the table, half-drained, and the etched swans laugh at me.

you were never in the room. you haven’t been in the room for months.

Easter lilies split the mud,
black crust on the iron ring,
the kitchen is cold.