The Hollow Clock

He kissed his wife at half-past eight,
A ghost kiss, brief and cold as slate.
"I work late, love," the practiced lie
Fell softly, meeting her distant eye.
He drove to where the streetlights bloomed,
A different threshold, different roomed,
Where Nnenna waited, warm and bright,
A stolen sliver of the night.
Her perfume drowned the scent of home,
In tangled sheets, no need to roam
Beyond this urgent, fevered touch –
He craved the fire, forgot the hutch
Where vows like dusty heirlooms lay.
He whispered things he'd never say
To Ada, stitching by the lamp,
Her quiet strength a steadying damp
On his own restless, seeking flame.
He thought her life a placid game
Of household rhythms, calm and deep,
Unknowing while the city slept,
John came – his friend from club and bar –
Bearing not whisky, but a star
Of jasmine blooms. Helen would rise,
Surprise a softness in her eyes.
John knew the cracks within the glass,
Knew where the weary hours would pass
For Ada, waiting, patient, still,
A vessel needing warmth to fill.
He offered laughter, shared complaint,
Then more, where moonlight made no saint.
Her touch, to John, was not a theft,
But solace, tenderly bereft
Of her own husband's absent care.
They moved together on the stair,
A silent dance the clockwork missed,
Sealing their pact with murmured tryst
While he traced patterns on her skin
(That other her), deep lost within
The thrill of secrets closely kept,
Believing Ada soundly slept
Or read, or dreamed of nothing more
Than duties knocking at the door.

Time spun its fragile, brittle thread.
One afternoon, suspicion led
Him home too soon – a nagging doubt,
A sense of something wrong about
A phrase John dropped, a glance too swift.
He turned the key, a gentle drift
Of foreign scent – not Nnenna's musk –
Hung in the hall. A shadowed dusk
Filled the front room. He heard a sound,
A stifled gasp, abrupt, unbound,
Then footsteps rushing soft, unseen,
A side door clicking shut, serene.
He found his wife beside the hearth,
Her cheeks flushed with a second birth
Of color, hair escaping neat.
A book lay tumbled at her feet.
"John called," she offered, voice too light,
"Just borrowed back that fishing light
He'd lent you months ago." Her gaze
Slipped sideways through the dying haze
Of afternoon. A thread of fear,
So fine, hung trembling in the air.

Then, near the couch, his sharp eye caught
A gleam of silk, a pattern wrought
In blues he knew. He stooped, heart slow,
And lifted it. A scarf. And so,
It wasn't Anna's, bold and red...
This fragile thing, blue-threaded, led
Back to a gift he'd given John
Last birthday dawn. His thoughts were gone,
Swept clean by cold, cascading dread.
He held the evidence, soft thread
By damning thread. He saw it clear –
The hurried step, the scent, the fear
In Ada's eyes... not for his sin,
But for the lover ushered in
And out the side. His trusted friend.
The careful world he sought to mend
With secret fires now buckled, broke.
The accusations choked, unspoke.
He stared at Helen, mute, undone,
Holding the scarf beneath the sun
That slanted through the windowpane,
Illuminating all the pain
He'd sown, and she, in silent rage,
Had harvested on this stark stage.
The clock upon the mantel chimed,
Marking the hollow, empty time.

-Ogangan Emmanuel Udugba