in bits
Somewhere, in the city, someone is feeding someone their last yoghurt.
Somewhere someone is holding their mother’s hand across starched sheets and saying ‘I love you’ and hearing no reply.
Somewhere someone is watching tea fall back out of their lover’s mouth onto the hospital gown.
Somewhere a taxi driver is telling a passenger to ‘just take her in a cream cake, or wine, whatever she likes’. He says to ‘just rub the cream on her lips if she can’t swallow.’
In a town somewhere siblings lie in the hospice dark, not sleeping, listening to Max Richter and hoping it will be tonight.
On a plane somewhere lies a body that was lost that is coming home.
Somewhere in a woodland a mother is placing daisies on the eyes of her daughter and a penny in her palm.
Somewhere a man is making a batch of cottage pies for the freezer because he wants to help.
On a side table somewhere is a toothbrush and her favourite crisps.
Somewhere someone is visiting and asking ‘do the birds come to the window every day?’ because there is nothing else to say.
Somewhere someone is realising they can’t manage the phone calls anymore.
Somewhere where it is early and it is already hot there is a man lying at the foot of the stairs and no one is coming.
On the arm of a sofa somewhere is an open book that no one can now bear to shut.
Somewhere someone is hearing the words ‘there’s nothing more we can do’. ‘we’ll make you comfortable’
Somewhere in a side room someone is saying ‘It’s probably best not to go again now if you want to be here when…’.
Somewhere someone is forgetting and remembering and forgetting and asking again ‘is he dead?’
Somewhere someone is watching a policeman walk up their drive.
Somewhere someone is emptying a fitted wardrobe and sock drawers. Decanting pen jars of blunt RSPB pencils, receipts and keys for somewhere else.
Somewhere someone is in their bed saying ‘I just want a few more days’ over and over to friends who can only say ‘I know you do’, ‘I know’.
Somewhere on the fourth floor in the fading light someone is asking ‘Do I still look like me?’ ‘Please can you brush my hair?’
On the side somewhere there is a to do list and washing to hang out that will mould until its binned.
Somewhere someone is saying ‘listen, I have some news’.
Somewhere on a long walk in a town they only half-know someone is deciding not to visit again.
Somewhere someone is replying ‘dignity and not too much pain are the priorities’ as a kind man with a lanyard nods and says ‘we’ll do our best’.
On a corridor somewhere on the edge of the city he applies her lipstick so she can go with her face on.
Somewhere someone is holding the face of someone who couldn’t bear to stay.
Somewhere someone is walking out of a room for the last time.
And somewhere someone is going.
And somewhere someone is gone.
