The Thin Woman
There has always been another woman inside me,
a small one who wears this flesh of mine
like a coat, hiding her pure self in the folds
of my flesh, the plenitude of thighs,
ripeness of belly.
Now her murmurs grow louder.
The house is filled with her keening.
Her sooty eyes quiver
under mine like water and her o-mouth
gapes as if to swallow my sleeping.
She gulps down air. Her fingers encircle my gullet.
She fills me with absence, the emptiness of water.
I feel her rising, her narrow grip on my belly.
She will fly out, soon, from my lips,
like a rigid ghost, breath
visible under her extravagant ribs.
Kitty Coles has been writing since she was a child, but only submitting work for publication in the last few years. Her poems have appeared in magazines including Mslexia, South, Obsessed With Pipework, Iota, The Interpreter’s House and The Journal. www.kittyrcoles.com