Poem of the week: The Woman Who Went Down the Plughole

An ordinary Tuesday morning.
Mostly fine. High cloud scudding past,
the sudden whip of rain on glass, then sun again.

She’d decided: a new pair of Marigolds,
a bottle of bleach. She’d scrub off the ring
of grime from the steep walls of the bathtub

if it killed her. She twirled the taps
and watched the stream of water,
laminar as glass, then rougher, faster.

When her phone rang the first time
she let it go. Peeling off a bright glove,
she cleared her throat as it rang again.

No one could say exactly when things changed,
though they had their theories. Only she knew
it was that moment, perched on the edge

of a steaming bath. Off she went,
tiny and pale as Fay Wray, arm raised,
not a thing she could do to save herself.

Audrey Molloy's debut collection, The Important Things (The Gallery Press, 2021), received the Anne Elder Award and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize. The Gallery Press recently published her second collection, The Blue Cocktail