Maria Ferguson

Maria Ferguson



On honeymoon I dream of my abuser

I pass him in the corridor and I want him
to want me.  I’ve rolled up my skirt,
padded my bra. He teaches a class
on cadences and I suck the end of a pen.
He has a wife. Two kids.
He tries to resist but it’s futile really;
the way I’m flinging my young body
all over the practice rooms.
When he corners me on the last day
of term I don’t know what to do
except press a lime green folder to my chest,
back myself up against the wall as he comes
towards me, clear as cold water and I gasp
through the surface to a man’s touch,
eggs and coffee, a highland view.
I am thirty-two. A wife. Married
to a man who works in schools
where the girls giggle at break.





MARIA FERGUSON is an award-winning writer and performer from Romford. Her poems have recently appeared in Butcher’s Dog, Perverse and Magma, and her debut collection Alright, Girl? was Highly Commended in the Forward Prizes.