Brian Bilston: She’d Dance

She’d dance like no one was watching
although she liked to think he was.
The kitchen was her grand ballroom;
her partner was a mop.

She’d foxtrot among the pots and pans,
she’d paso doble to the sink,
and as she swept across the floor,
her mind danced, too. She’d think

of how he’d held her in his arms
at the Locarno and the Ritz -
whirling, waltzing, a world apart -
in the years before the kids,

and longer still before the shadow
the doctor spotted on his lungs.
How dazzlingly they had danced!
How dizzyingly she had spun!

Her neighbours saw her sometimes,
shuffling bent-backed to the shops.
But at home, she’d dance like no one was watching
although she liked to think he was.