Agapanthus

The patio set

outlasted the marriage.

Ironclad, handsome

(she always went for quality) – 

sober set dressing for agapanthus 

throwing a blue hen party.

He hates their electric fireworks,

unbridled exotics in plain pots.

I snoop around her house

while he walks her old bitch hound,

pills the willing she-cat,

the final understanding between them.

Other women left him

common heartbreak and kinks,

an Italian grill-pan, a habit

of post-coital melancholy.

She left no trace at all.

This deserves admiration.

I open a bottle of her wine,

sit in her distempered garden, 

carve out my terms in the dirt,

what I will keep, what I will concede. 

Natasha Gauthier