I saw you,
you know.
You didn’t
see me
but I saw
you.
I was
walking past
and you
were sat in Emma’s Café
with your
back to the window.
There
were others in there, too –
an
engaged couple,
engaged
in tea and toast.
You made
sure they could not witness
what I
saw.
But I saw,
and I
know what you did.
And if
you knew that I had seen
I hope
you would have been
mortified.
From the front
–
the fair
facing front –
the innocent
public facing front –
it would
have seemed that
you were
just fondling
your
spectacles,
just
resting your eyes perhaps
from too
long use of
an outdated
prescription.
But from
behind
I could see
that the
right arm of those
spectacles
was
delving deep,
deep into
the orifice of your right ear
searching
the dark recesses
for that
itching
bitching
wax.
And I could
feel your relief
from
that
gnawing,
teeth-clenching
itch
as the shovel-ended
spectacle
blade
performed
its
miraculous
mining.
But I’m
no fool.
I would not
hang around to see the
denouement,
the moment
of
spectacle,
the grand
reveal
as laden arm
was
slowly withdrawn
from now empty ear.
But how
was your tea?
And where
is that load now?
Was it surreptitiously
wiped on a paper napkin
and left
with your dirty plate?
Or was it
smeared across your open palm
and then hands rubbed together
until it had
seemed
to
disappear
only
actually to be spread
homoeopathically
across
every
handle
you handle
every
surface
you brush
every
child's head you stroke
every
barehanded loaf you hold?
Your
efflorescent
effluvium
lubricating
the world.
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