Last orders, and the barman giving us the look
he gives the couples he can't work out.
We're not a couple. That's the whole problem.
You've been talking for an hour about your sister's wedding
and I've been watching your mouth do it,
the way it pulls a little to the left on the hard words,
the way you wet your lip before a lie.
Small ones. _Ah, it was grand._
It wasn't grand. Your face says it wasn't grand.
The rain is doing what it does here,
which is everything, sideways.
My lipstick's on the rim of my glass
like a signature on a form
I haven't read the terms of.
I am thirty-four years old.
I have been careful my whole life.
I have been careful in Galway, in Dublin,
in a two-bed in Leeds for three wet years,
and I'll tell you what careful got me:
a good coat, and nobody to take it off.
So when you stand to go
and lean down for the polite kiss, the cheek one,
the one we've been doing since college,
I turn my face.
Just that. Just the angle.
And I bite your bottom lip,
not hard — enough —
and feel you go still
the way a field goes still before thunder.
The barman says _lads_, in a voice like a door closing.
You say _Aoife_ like it's a question.
I say get your coat,
and you do,
and the rain takes us both
all the way home
sideways.
