Katrina Naomi

The Snug & I Saw Them Making Love

Confessions held by a stained glass door, glass coloured by tales of affairs and debts, horses and deaths. So much hanging in the air, like smoke exhaled in the O of conversation – of what might have been. There’s something I’m meant not to know. And maybe, just maybe, if you could share a little of what goes on behind that clever exterior, all those smiles and kisses, if you could tell me about your men, I think I could be happy with you, could sit and tell what I haven’t told a soul, on this three- four- five-beer evening. I check the barman isn’t by the hatch, so we can be almost safe – almost sacred. The beer’s foam eases the jaws, allows the teeth their glory. We keep on, order another, money on the hatch – a glimpse of the hand, the wedding ring. The grouse in the snug’s glass turns its head as if to try not to hear what men do. The hatch flap down, we go back to ourselves, our common theatre, as if to sup in silence would be a failure, somehow.