Triptych

We drank each other’s passion so deeply to begin, both so alive.

That taste won’t come again, I know, but with eyes closed

I can summon still that hot, moist noon, that wide July sky,

that special place and all that mattered, then.

You were so slim, lithe, so young,

amongst the corn and poppies, the bees’ drone,

amidst sharp stones on the rich, rich earth

where you sighed and arced on a red rug,

where we laughed and quivered and shook,

where our breathing became broken,

burning gasps climbing close to nirvana, it seemed,

like spring and summer all together, epiphany,

so when a plane flew overhead, we thought it would crash

down on us, down on our field, down on our time,

and we didn’t care, embracing our fantasy:

that taintless love was all that there could ever be,

we thought. Yet there grew another intimacy,

which attested that I was yours and you were mine,

a weekly communion on well-worn sheets,

whispering ‘I love you,’ a practised litany,

before attempted sleep, before restless nights

tugging the duvet until the children woke,

until the procession of daily tasks,

of things to bear to be able to cope,

formally together but a household apart, locked

into our tethers: work, nappies, bedtime stories,

the bitter pills swallowed; desperate days

laden with mundanity, frustration,

burdened with the awareness and acceptance

that this we must bear to survive

to another kind of being, at the ending,

the spiritual epilogue when everything has slowed,

where occasionally we join dry hands without thinking

and peck the proffered wrinkled cheek.

Pulses no longer quicken, yet we continue

together, resigned, held close somehow

through another minute, hour, another week,

understanding that it was never the same at all

after the sunshine, the ecstasy and the plane

and never will be now

and always will be this empty, this chill:

bookends in the window, rheumy-eyed, watching out

- the empty street, the blank wall -

caustic, coughing, bent and aching,

arguing about everything, about nothing,

and waiting, as the clock ticks, ticks:

awaiting the cremation, as we must,

waiting until it is time to incinerate you

or for you to scatter my ashes,

layering dust on dust on dust.