Leaving

Yellow smudge of moon in grey sky

Chin like a porcupine

Sagging face, pale as gruel

Slowly, like a garden fading

Your life, in its shadows and glories

Is going away

The creaking bed

And the Hoovers that mow

Breath goes in. Rattles like pebbles. Goes out.

You are like a huge creature washed up

On an alien shore. I watch as

The light fades from your frame –

An inexplicable event. You are leaving

Soon, you will depart from this room,

With its intimacies and indignities

A space that you barely inhabited

Breath goes in. Does not come out