that heartless thing insomnia

both of them

slept

on my left,

back when.

and ever since then,

at the end

of each day when

I flick the switch

to turn on the dark,

that sticky thing grief – that I brush off

for great chunks of each day –

comes nightly to torment me

with this

predicament:

do I lie on my right

with my back to the void,

and face the emptiness

and otherness instead,

to give myself

a break?

or, do I lie on my left

and know that I will see

every, single, detail

and shape of them,

sleeping, alive, to my left,

and I will hear them,

just a little, not enough,

and their breaths

will fill and empty me?

 

and, as if that sword

isn’t double-edged enough,

on the nights, the many nights,

that I choose to lie on my left

to wallow in that elusive film,

grief’s eternal cruelty must choose

if it’s him, or him,

to be the star.

 

alas it happens without thought or decision

that many nights I see him,

sprawled on his belly,

the essence of quiet,

his left hand firmly in mine,

music in his fingers filling the silence

 

and other nights I see him,

resting on his back,

belly rising, noisy,

his right hand solid in mine,

songs on his lips floating away

 

it’s for those brief, beautiful visions

I never want to let go,

that lying on my left is heaven.

 

but always the sword slides in and twists,

and that erratic thing memory – that I struggle to find in the days –

joins me to hold my other hand

and together it and grief walk me

down the winding lanes of my stories,

and it’s in them that I remember

and see his beautiful stories,

and his, and ours,

and the wretched The Ends,

because of course

with all that seeing and hearing

I recall it all,

and so it happens,

that when I lie on my left

that dodgy thing sleep – that always gets terribly lost in stories –

once again, doesn’t, can’t,

find me