I wipe a hole in the mirror and in her nightdress
wonder what it was like being loved and unloved
by the boy. From behind the skin-thin hide
of the partition I had climaxed with her in the night.
In the early morning I watched from the window
while she kissed and clung to him. Tenderly,
he unfastened her fingers like buttons one by one.
The mirror gapes like a vulva as the steam-clouds
divide. Skin-close my eyes swell against the stained
glass in worship as if it were someone else – the boy
the girl; both. I inhale the vinegary perfume
of their bodies in a solitary ménage à trois.
Brian Fogarty (originally published in The London Magazine).