I needed a drink before handling it,
the clammy skin, thin and raw.
I remembered touching a dead bishop once;
Sign of the Cross, shivers.

Its feet, ditched in the sink, reached
like withered hands appealing.
The crack of its bones chilled my own.
I sank another, severed the neck.

The membranous eyes were unsettling,
the shrunken head bereft on the block,
the clutch and the squelch as innards slopped out –
gizzard, heart, lungs.

I finished the bottle to see it through
and caught the scene in the night behind glass,
a corpse like a glove to my wrist.
I am sick to the stomach of Christmas.

It’s hazy then until Boxing Day,
a shock of light across the room.
I wake to blood trapped under my nails,
to the delicate snap of a wishbone.