Difficulty

This is difficult. The whole thing systematises

itself to me; but what of that is the need

to have story and sense? What part of me prises

itself now free – neonatal breaths and beats –

bloody but clean, no disease, nothing to fix?

It seems I have a mind too keen for tricks

and a body too prepped for pleasure, but the strain

of trying to keep it all together, remember you unalloyed

is tipping the fine balance. I have to train

myself to look - unblinking - directly at the void

I’ve had beside me all my life, and feel

you sweating out of me, finally, and for real.

It’s hard enough to know what’s there or not

when things sit still, harder yet when they’re long gone.

The plangent cries of mothers grieving missing sons is what

plays out above the minor chords of Our Song

and I'm holding back teardrops which could smooth

the rough and jagged, complete the incomplete stupid move.

And so the difficulty remains, the work does not get done.

“It’s miserable here” I want to write. But it was so rarely fun,

bar those precious bursts when we both knew

the purest distillation of whatever’s meant by ‘me and you’.