Exit, Left Copyright © Rob Lock 2011

His face had not been in her mirror
for three months now but still his shadow
dogged the house, appearing at her side
from time to time. Nothing she could say
brought the wrongness of this home to him.

Perhaps it wasn’t quite that he was wrong;
but he wasn’t right. In the end he gave way,
she moved out, and they tasted, differently,
the cold, the open – the emptiness –
of air not filtered through the other’s lungs.