It was as near as dammit the dress
Julia Roberts wore to the polo match,
except mine was navy with cream
polka dots, hers caramel and cream.
I’d been shopping with your brother’s wife
in Jigsaw, so you’d not seen the dress
till I stood, slinky, against the back door.
You left whatever it was you were doing
in the garden – it was August, so let’s say
you were dead-heading – and very quickly
I was no longer wearing the dress.
And if I had known that that was the last time,
surely I would have woken up to the enormity
of what I was letting slip, and fought hard,
fought with every fibre, to stop it.
We were made for each other like polkas and dots,
caramel and cream, Julia Roberts and Richard Gere.
But look at me stepping back into the dress,
pulling up the side zip, smoothing it down,
as though that’s all it took.