Recognition

Afterwards she was often puzzled

when she opened her eyes

and saw her husband

half asleep next to her.

Surely it was not this angry man

who muttered in his worn leather armchair,

who shouted at the dinner table

who came in drunk and broke crockery.

It cannot have been this man

who had run his fingers down her body

and made her quiver,

who had sucked her nipples

to the edge of pain and pleasure,

whose hard softness she had taken inside her

until she bucked and moaned.

But then again, perhaps in those moments

when she had quivered to a halt

and he pumped on till his end

and tears pressed behind her eyes

she did recognise him.