By Andrew Barnes

She is too tired to chew food.
Imagine fatigue so all embracing
that only movements of unconscious reflex
can occur, and then only as the wings
of a butterfly fluttering briefly for a day.
Life has slowed to a halt. He visits each morning,
brings tiny gifts, which go largely unrecognised,
an orange, so she can suck the juice
from an individual segment, a magazine,
so he can hold new pictures in front of her face.
Swallowing an all-consuming effort,
hydration through a saline drip,
cannula discomfort in the folds of sagging skin,
a rhythm of droplets, slower than life,
sloe as gin, the vague antiseptic of blueberries.
Sometimes he stays until night, watching
the autumn dank creep over the sill,
to gradually overtake false hospital neon.
Nurses dim ward lights, indicators flickering
as fireflies, her shape in the bedding chrysalis.
He prefers the blueing-grey of hospice night, dozing
in a chair beside the bed, her lack of response,
low and flimsy breath, explainable, acceptable in sleep.
For a couple of hours he can pretend to forget,
and in the half-dark no-one can see his tears.
But too soon a new sun always rises, for him at least,
weak, watery, powerless, but still a reminder of the need
to stir weary limbs and walk the repeating day again.
Always a clean nightie and sanitary pads to collect,
‘no change’ news to deliver, wings to pin out and catalogue.