She's in Seventh Heaven,

a Galway restaurant, supping lager

and smoking pugnaciously,

shielding, like kids in school,

a notebook in the crook of her arm.

I'm constructing in my head a sort of

poète maudit out of phrases I hope

to make peace with later (these now worming

their way down-screen) and imagining perfidy,

a charge of double-dealing rolling-off

the end of her pen, words like

absence, bastard, need, making them absolute

whenever she raises her head

and rests the pen to take a swig, a furious

suicidal drag of smoke,

or – as if I'm her subject – glare at me.

Glass of house white to accompany the fish,

tilting the meniscus against the candle-flame.

It looks as though the batter's overdone,

singed around the edge. He won't complain.

Squeezes the lemon slice, uncomfortable with pips,

which he manoeuvres to the plate's blue rim.

Eating, at a table for two, alone. Unlike to linger.

Bed-and-breakfast, single room. Getting away

from what? – but aren't we all? Put him in a poem

perhaps. Title something droll, like ‘Seventh Heaven’.