This poem is taken from PN Review 275, Volume 50 Number 3, January - February 2024.

Two Poems

Dilys Rose
Memory Foam

The mattress had to go. Never mind that
it was still under guarantee and the stains
were barely discernible; never mind that
it hadn’t been cheap – or that she had to pay
to get it to the dump.

There was no argument, though some muttered
that chucking it out was a symbolic gesture
she couldn’t afford, what with all the other
costs – predictable and unforeseeable –
that the split entailed.

She wasn’t sentimental, and hadn’t the least  
attachment to springs and batting but
each silent, solitary night she’d find dents
in the memory foam, from a shoulder, an elbow,
an outstretched hand.


At the Museum of Broken Relationships, Zagreb
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