Undoing

It was slower than she’d thought
getting the wedding dress off;

a fret of buttons in ivory silk
worked the length of her spine.

His fingers were thick with haste,
not for the V of silent skin deepening

beneath them, but for the party
he was missing down the hall.

Halfway through he left her where she stood
in a flinch of light from the street.

Still as icing, she saw how roses
blotted colour from the bedroom walls,

how it was not possible to do herself up again,
the fabric at her back opening like doubt.

© Louise Oxley