Glass House
This house has no need for doors or windows:
the stranger’s gaze moves through it as the wind
rinsing out soft furnishings and memory,
razing walls and leaving only silence.
Look right through it to the street beyond –
see the woman leaning from her balcony
carrying on a dialogue in code
with the dalit standing in her yard.
Inside we sit cross-legged on our bed.
I stare into your handsome, ageing face
while on the roof two working men touch hands.
They do not look in one another’s eyes.
They perch there like two migratory birds
while we luxuriate in nakedness.
Tom McLaughlin is a Derry-born poet. His debut pamphlet, Open Houses, was published in 2021 with Marble Press. He completed an MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway and is a practice-based PhD candidate at Surrey. His poems have recently featured in anthologies by Arachne Press and Broken Sleep.