Wednesday, 13 March 2024

A Toffee Penny, Once Spent.

 

A Toffee Penny, Once Spent.

 

I don’t really mind your toffee penny.

I know people say it’s too plain

to dress in that gaudy yellow wrap,

you know, grouchy it’s a bit vanilla

and you’d expect a fistful of change,

but, for all that, it’s creamy enough

to roll it round your tongue like nipples.

I think it’s those montélimar

you’d find at the bottom of my tin,

stuck there like emotional cripples,

having bled chocolate from slit foil.

Chewing them is such thankless toil

once you scraped nougat off metal,

clagged unwanted under fingernails.

She’s looking at hers, freshly filed

into crimson points, all high heeled,

iced latte clutched and lung-punctured,

phone bleating in the other claw,

in tinted skin that one time glistered more,

hanging aimless at the office door:

‘you smell like my ex-boyfriend,

my lover, my significant other’.

You'd shrug and wonder where he went,

a toffee penny that she spent.




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