Frontline

After your shift, you strip outside in darkling light,

where an ill wind immured me.

Your shadowed face, indented and chafed.

‘It’s all around,’ you say, flailing arms in violet air.

Soft air that could steal my incarcerated breath away.

You swelter on antiseptic wards, loaded with fear and bleeping machines.

Cycle home, drenched with sweat and rain.

While I scour our cloistered, separate confinement, concoct dinners.

Bide my secluded time under empty skies, reading, dreaming,

drumming my fingers as rain babbles

on the straightjacket of four walls,

from blackbird’s mellifluous dawn to a nightjar’s vespers.

Running on empty promises,

as your uniform boil-washes.

Imagine drinking parties that aren’t parties,

while you shower contamination away.

Through the bathroom door, you ask how I am.

Afraid your protection isn’t fit for purpose.

I remember bed with you,

as I set your glass, cutlery and meal away from me.

I last held your hand in March,

walking on the moor’s star-shaped moss,

our boots setting capsuled dark seeds loose.

Omens for what was quickening our way.