Three Noises

Her laughter is the sweetest water,

her sigh the sharpest reproach,

her moan the deepest joy.

Puritans of the Playground

Her “lunch” went on longer than she’d intended so

there was no time to go home and shower and

throw on the uniform of jeans and sweater or

better still a tracksuit, so she had stand in the

school playground in her sharp suit with that

lovely low neckline and her highest heels,

suffering the stares of the other Mothers

screaming Slut, Whore, Jezebel when their

husbands were probably beating their

meat on the internet and sex meant a

quick shag on their birthdays, and maybe she’d

been at a business meeting! No, ok, she

was an adultress with

pleasantly sticky knickers and she was

damned if the puritans of the

playground were going to spoil the

memory of such a

momentous fuck.

A Winter Break

She swam under a cormorant sky

willing it to rain to quench somewhat the

heat that drew her here from a

brutal winter and early widowhood but had

oppressed her since, like the

sweaty weight of an invisible body

stirring her long-dead loins into

cruel longing, arousal, the blush of

shame she felt as she dog-paddled towards

Africa where the men lying on the beach looked like

dark driftwood on which she knew she would

end up impaled.

Mother Knows?

She knew straight away—do

Mothers always know?—that her

daughter was now (horrid expression)

sexually active: that little

flushed smile and the embarrassed

wriggle of her hips when she

thought herself unobserved. Her

father would be horrified, though his

new child-bride might be more

....understanding, perhaps?

She wondered if they should have another “talk”, but

what if that talk turned to her own

current man-friend and what her

vanilla Mum now enjoyed? The

purple stripes on her bum and the

plug within, the thick collar and

heavy chain hidden beneath her more

exotic underwear, the exhilarating threat of being

offered to others?

Oh shit, she thought, as she

blew on her tea—how on

earth would I ever

explain all that?

The Anonymous Door

At the anonymous door she paused to collect her

scattered nerves and found she was

twisting her wedding ring as though about to

take it off, but she thought of the

patrons within who paid top dollar to

give it hard to someone else’s wife so she

left it on her finger as she

glanced up to find Venus, bright in the

night sky—her Goddess, her

totem, her protector—and dedicated to her

whatever was to happen as she

opened the door and

went in.

Lost Property

She stamped her feet to try and

get some circulation going on the

gelid platform in the near dark of

dawn waiting for the train that

wouldn’t come despite her

desperation and just when she thought she would

die her phone tinged a text “You

forgot something” shit what?

her glasses? her report? her

life? oh and there was a photo of his

startlingly erect penis “Needs a

warm, wet home” and she

shivered with heat and cold and decided to

give the train another 30 seconds before she

gave it all up.