thank you for this week Val
on Christmas Day 2015 my mum was critically ill in hospital
i wrote this during those days when i thought i was going to lose her
recorded today w/ some music
WORDS LIKE BLOOD
Words, like blood,
flow unsteadily as we age.
Corridors that seemed
wide as the horizon in childhood time
darken, narrow, begin to fade
in a womb-like, soupy sky.
We begin to remember
the things we said
those we didn't,
what we left behind,
and everything and nothing hold the same meaning.
Nights grow shorter.
We wake sometime in the day
next to a window
in a room
with lime green and biege walls
and a single, framed watercolour
before us:
you in your bed
dressed in a white robe.
Me in a chair by your side.
We gaze out from the shore
to vanishing point
of an altered horizon
on some nameless day in forever.
A small island in the bay
surrounded by a calm, iridescent, emerald sea
tells the story we no longer can...
Water laps gently
at its craggy outline;
a reassuring, steady pulse,
reminding me where
my boundaries lay,
where the dangers are,
and one naked trunk protrudes
from an escarpment. It is I,
leaning into you, longing to feel
your warm, milk-sweet blood
envelop me again.