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She brushes her teeth with care. The strokes are slow and shorter. I don’t know if she is aware, That in the mirror I’ve caught her. But I know her quite well enough now, To spot the sham of her manner, To watch her mind quite taken up, With acting out casual glamour. “I’m not using this while you’re watching,” she said, With brush poised and pasted. “Why? Might I distract you and cause accidents?” My efforts at wit were not wasted. With a sly sense of the adorable, “I’m the world’s messiest tooth-brusher,” she said. “Well now I have to watch,” was my reply, And took a big step back instead. She brushed, and I watched and grinned. It was the start of something lovely. Her strokes then were short and careful. She brushed to impress. And I loved the way her hair fell from its inadequate perch. Then later the bathroom became the stage for our squabbles, Our voices bouncing off tiles. “I was waiting since six, and you didn’t ’phone me!” She could be in the wrong by ten miles, But I saw the way that her hand’s angry wobbles Were flicking the froth up her nose, And I loved that woman, my foam-freckled lady, And in the next room found repose. Our trip to the sun has been done on the cheap. This camp-site has seen better days. A man in sun-glasses waits his turn at the sink, And my lady displays her new ways. She brushes her teeth with care. The strokes are slow and shorter. I don’t know if she is aware, That in the mirror I’ve caught her. |
Notes:
This poem was, in common with The Glimmer and Never Meet Your Heroines, written during a fourteen-hour wait in Copenhagen airport in 2010. It was inspired by a lady who did indeed claim to be the world’s messiest tooth-brusher, but who then seemed to be far from this when I watched. Everything else is pure fiction. I was very happy with the simplicity of “a man in sunglasses”. |