Zoe R.

the good mistress

It was me who unplugged your hairdryer.
He told me how suspicious that made you
and I’m sorry. He had been ironing a white shirt
before work — set the board up in your room.

I watched him in the hallway mirror
studying in reverse the glide of his hand,
the softening of steam, his gentle exactitude.
I caught my happy likeness

and thought how I would love to sit across from you
and talk about his starchiness and neat creases. You,
being the only one who would understand
this improbability.

When he left, the iron was still tethered
to the socket , so I went
and took out everything I saw plugged in.
To be a big secret I have to keep myself

small and I have tried. Outside of his bed I am bodiless —
a wispy ghost that won’t touch your living world.
But once when I was young I nearly burnt down
my family home in the same way you might —

a discarded hairdryer, electrical malfunctioning.
So accidental. Without malice
or thought. That’s the kind of blame
that stays with you. Please forgive me —

I didn’t want your house to burn down.

Zoe R. has a Undergraduate Diploma in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford and a Master's in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow. She has previously been longlisted for the Frome Short Story Award, the Renard Press Poetry Award and a Black Cat Press Competition. She has been published in various online and in print publications such as The Dawntreader, Black Cat Press Attitude Anthology, Paper Nations, and Snakeskin.

Zoe wrote the following about her poem:

The majority of my work explores complicated interpersonal dynamics — not just how people relate to one another, but how conflicting emotions can coexist around a single subject. This poem examines the complexities of loving someone in difficult circumstances, of wanting to avoid causing pain while knowing it’s inevitable. It explores whether a kind of sisterhood can exist within a territorial war, whether tenderness can be found in both love for him and quiet reverence for her. It’s a love letter to two people. The poem makes something private uncomfortably public — part apology, part vindication, yet, by its very existence, perhaps also a quiet assertion.