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Left to their own devices...

The men in her life were as 
hamsters
she'd had as a child.
Left too long on a radiator,
they cooked.
Or, as the one she took, 
limp, 
from its shoe-box house;
he'd just given up the ghost.
It wasn't easy remembering 
to give them 
water and rodent feed.
Returning from school, 
their bodies were lumps of clay,
as though she'd left them 
to play with sharp objects.
Leslie would say,
"Men left to their own devices,
were as hamsters 
she'd had as a child."

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