Come Away With Me

Do you recall that Tuesday, some years ago now –
you let on you were worried sick? Of course you don’t.
I’m just wasting my breath … Only, that’s when it began.
You’d go to a cupboard, a drawer – not the foggiest idea
what you went there for. Things got steadily worse.
Maybe you should see the quack, you asked. Perhaps
you had a propensity to Alzheimer’s? I kissed you.
Didn’t see much point; nothing they could do. Said
I’d only start to worry when you forgot ‘towel day’
was a Wednesday, or ‘sheet day’ was a Thursday.
Then, we’d slip between those freshly laundered sheets
and you’d say I wasn’t bad – not for my age, at least,
and the world went away, as you lost yourself in me.

If you forgot that Sunday – driving from our Joan’s,
High Wycombe to home, found myself in the coach-park
at Heathrow! And how a very kind copper respected
the fact I’d literally frozen – had a full-blown panic attack
when he tried to explain the journey back. How I said
I’d have to phone you. I felt confused and alone. In the end,
we drove in convoy. He led me to the northbound M1,
heading the right way this time. If you forgot that Mondays
was always ‘pizza day’, and to order a large Messerschmidt
olives on one side, pineapple – the other … Or if you forgot
my birthday; last Tuesday it was – not that it really matters.
Or that my favourite ever song is ‘Come Away With Me’.

Speaking of which, how about tomorrow – Friday, 13th.
An apt day, all things considered; if I could lay my hands
on the tickets, that is. We always did fancy Switzerland.
How would you feel about that? But for tonight though,
let’s just sleep on it. Pretend it’s all been a dream. Maybe
it has. Who are we to say? And when we wake …
half the joy of it, in the remembering.