After the Party
You wake cold, before sun,
in someone’s spare room
and strange bed.
Already your assassin has gone,
unknown, uncaring,
so now, with glazed recollection,
you lie at the stone font of morning,
bruised and trembling,
amid fleeting gaps
of abandoned ritual.
But too soon, the world looks in
at a space grotesquely filled
and future climbers mock your closed legs,
knowing they will step there again.
Barbara Lawton