The Meringue and Red-Brick Bordered House

Where the lavender bushes served bees out front,
and an ancient holly tree slain in July ’73,
where white gloss banisters gave agency to four girls,
where a lady sunned herself chestnut with Ambre Solaire
and a golden retriever barked herself hoarse,
where on the centrepiece parquet floor
a woman and girl fox-trotted to the Glenn Miller Band,
where a deep square ceramic sink held an offal bloodbath
and the business as usual hum of the deep freeze,
and the toiling thrashing of a washing machine, held sway.

Where upstairs in a small room Deep Purple, Pink Floyd
and Led Zeppelin played for a boy and his sister,
where at the back a woman howled and a man's fist glowered,
where meaning for two girls was found in Abba and Queen
and one lost herself in fiction on the window seat
to the witness of the windows of the big house opposite,
where there was inexplicable blood loss in the toilet,
where a man's bowels evacuated volubly,
where a teenage girl collapsed, amidst pills like confetti,
where my inner map was sketched, and my unravelling began.