Poetry - September 2017

The Office Party

The light sneaking through slits in the corporate blinds is clean and thin, so, he guesses, about 6am.

Banhi from Accounts is gone now, he imagines her driving away in her beaten up Nissan Micra, with the ‘I heart New York’ sticker on the back (though she’d never been), taking her scent of florid perfume and the smell underneath, like over ripe peaches in the sun — sweet, sticky and full of juice — to make its home again in her husband’s arms.

He curls back up under his duffle coat and worries thoughts into the worn patches of the lining.

Little snippets of memory are returning now like Polaroids in a pile.

He remembers the kiss, not the first cool touch of lips but The Kiss, up against the water cooler in the hallway by Section B —

the long, warm journey into her, like falling back into himself, somewhere safe — Sunday morning under the blankets, watching black and whites with a cold cup of coffee.

Yes, coffee. She had stepped back from him and begun to undress, right there in the hall, her fragile brown body too tangible under the strip lighting. It made her surreal, like the coffee machine had become confused and poured out molten woman instead.

Yes, molten. The Heat of her, the incredible Heat in his arms the ecstasy in finally rolling her name around his mouth like an olive, and dropping it into hers —

Banhi. Banhi. Those two tiny syllables had dominated him for months, haunted the deathlike space between wake and sleep, wiggled its way into his work, refused to leave, always inserting a comma after itself, so the next one slotted straight into place.

He speaks it now self-consciously into the empty room. Listens to the way it moves of its own accord, soaking into piles of paper like honey, wrapping around filing cabinets, hugging the steel frames.

The light has grown more confident now, spreading over the office in a warm pallor, so, he guesses, 7am. Soon his colleagues will be arriving to start the day. Time to take the word and file it away. Until the next office party, at least.