An exercise in writing the unwritable….

a small death

It’s just the smell at first,
which tells me there has been
a small death in the house,
perhaps lying amongst the fluff and shoes
underneath the bed.

It is a compost smell,
the hot, sweet pudding heart of rotting grass,
or fruity vomit caught and fizzing
in a nostril.
And I am almost frightened to track it down.
A bluebottle circles drunkenly,
around the bedroom
bumps its buzzy face against mine,
gorged with carrion, and empty of eggs
like a returning bomber.
And I wait for an explosion
in the local population
of flies.

With the going of the smell, some days later,
I find a mouse,
flattened beneath a rug.
No bone unbroken in its body,
teeth grinning sideways,
a yellowed fragment
of an old ivory comb.
Its body ripples
with the temporary life of maggots,
more used to three dimensions,
than this collapsed world.

I take a dustpan and brush to it,
dislodging a fly,
into a lazy, helicopter spiral.
And it comes away from the carpet
like a toffee.
leaving a sticky brown stain behind.

© James Nash, Coma Songs [2006]