So, the weather's back and I've lost

Hold of the thread again. Fantasising

About being whisked away in a black

Cab, ushered silently into a room where

The bath is drawn and the food

Awaits under silver cloches. The ostrich

Approaches, I suppose: when we cleared

Her house I found a small scrawled note

That said, Will my husband leave me? In

Frightening shaky caps. But what can you do

With any of it? Somewhere on the journey I

Misplaced the bag of things I'd set aside to keep

Her crucifix, the good pans–already

The list is fading quickly

And I know I will not miss it–but the note

Which I quickly scrunched up and threw away

Keeps stealing in like a draught.

March

I read some place, I don't remember where, that flowers

Fill poetry because of their size: the forehead

They fit in the imagination. Life might be that simple

After that winter, that fucking February

When you did what you did after I goaded you into it

And the thrill I felt–brilliant and disastrous as power is

How you can make a person do any terrible thing

If you know their love well enough. If you love them in return

There is no forehead the size of that. So we just forgot

And when the flowers came I cut them, naturally.

Hannah Regel is the author of the poetry collection, Oliver Reed (2020, Montez Press), and the novel The Last Sane Woman (2024, Verso). She lives in London.