Dear Bob

You passed away yesterday

Leaving a clean slate

And the feint trace, of warmth

Departing from hospice sheets

That held you in an open secret

For dignity to win that ‘fixed’ race

To the edge of darkness, then

Acceptance in sleep

Peeling away. All loss. All gain.

Re-calibrated

Everything now beyond recrimination

So swim now

Free from the tug of predatory tides

As if now is just imagination

Some superimposition

A victory for the nebulous thought

Over some brutal facts

Sit heavy, brooding in half-filled silence

Thud. The blood densely coursing

Thoughts haltingly coherent

Fragments at some barrier

Looking for lucid

And church bells chime

It is Sunday

Does that bring clarity?

And so

I recognized him at once

From the portal into that room

His expression came to me like sonar

And so I sat with Bob

On the edge

Of a chair beside his resting place

And we stroked the air

That lay between us

Half trying to embellish history

Knowing that the cells that made him

Have turned against him

False friends in a spiteful retreat

And now I am home

The echoes of that sighting

Fade like all we have ever touched

I fear to phone

In case he has gone

Yet we know he will

So transience, as ever

Has the upper hand

And I am left with what I have left of Bob.