A Woman Under the Influence

A Woman Under the Influence

In the dimming light of the late‑night pub,
she sits with a pint of bitter and a heart of amber,
the steam curling around her wrist like the fumes from a coal‑lit loo.
Every clink of glass sounds the thud of her thoughts –
each sip a little liberation, a small rebellion
against the grey of a Monday’s colourless routine.
With a wry smile she orders one more, the night unfolding
like a faint note on a piano, played by the trembling fingers of fate.

Outside the glass, the city breathes – a rush of buses, a wave of footfalls,
a gust of wind that hisses through the pipe‑lined derelict terraces.
Her mind, a carousel of whispers, spins between the soft hum of distant music
and the sharp jarring of a cheeky remark about her “marriage” and “promise.”
She hears the echo of her own voice in the corridor of a building block,
the echo of the wicked spell of the word “suffocate” – not in breath,
but in the clink of her resolve shaking against a glassy back‑hand.

She is under the influence: not the draught of spirits only,
but of a louder, louder breeze – the swelling roar of the media, the chime of a phone –
the echo that tells her to be the perfect housewife, the perfect partner,
the most desirable life in the glossy glossy of a sitcom.
She remembers the tiny scraped knees from school days
when the sky was pure white, no ruthlessness from the limelight.
But now the lawn is tape‑as‑repainted, the hedge trimmed by a modern premise,
and her own reflection, once silver, now stockist of a hue – a wink of blonde art.

The night swirls – she holds a fork, a ladle, a small cup of espresso served in a napkin that is marked with her faintly trembling hand, a mark of a girl in the deck taken by a storm.
She knows instantly she is in a house that breathes in all her edges, suddenly she thinks: “Remember the bench under the old elm tree – that was full of rain.
I could say, ‘the girl has an implication of rigour, a quiet sense of desire’ – but the darkness , just beyond the because, becomes a place that sea‑bed its own bass.
Her voice in the minibus of the world is an eruption of truth, the faint whistling of the wind across the eaves, with her whispering.

Its that if a mattress goes out; she gives up feelings about a frame, fearing that to drop is its weird solo. The shadows come silent, while the continuation will bring about a refresh.

At last, she sips one last drink while the echo of each librarian’s echo in the way, it and it keeps it.