Nine months have passed for the Earth

Sometime around 4 a.m I tried to find my jeans in the dark

Sometime around 6 a.m I made notes for you and watched the dawn force itself from night

Sometime around 10 a.m I stumble trip, stumble tripped  from the bus to a side room

Sometime around 3 p.m I talked to my boss before rushing to school

Sometime around 6 p.m we tried to do hangman while a nurse flurry bottlenecked the bedside

Sometime around 11 p.m we followed the bed upstairs and laughed at my Mr Bump icepack

Sometime around Friday morning I heard the noises as they fetched the nightstaff

Sometime around Friday I told Dad where the new lunch box was and noticed the weave on the blanket

Sometime around Friday afternoon I met the first of the faces and felt I was being managed

Sometime around 5 p.m I returned after only just getting home to Mum’s expression on the doorstep

Sometime around 6 p.m I sat by the faded flower mural for 45 minutes. In the desolate endless empty cold corridor next to our friend who silently studied his gardener’s hands

Sometime around later the nurse looked down at me saying  ‘he’s very ill isn’t he?’ and I experienced the first of the violent thoughts

Sometime around the evening I followed them to a private office. I watched the slow moving mouths down the wrong end of the telescope

Sometime after when gravity had tripled I shuffled the weight of my leaden legs to the lift

Sometime around 9 p.m I tried to make my voice work to your sister in law whose inhumanity ran free

Sometime on Saturday morning I looked at charts and sat in the orange relatives room. I pressed my head against the glass and watched the reflections of the outside world

Sometime around the afternoon I picked up our son from friends. Their natural garden wound round the doorframe like the crawling bindweed anxiety choking up through me

Sometime around Saturday evening I spoke to your friend as I stared through the debris on the bedside table

Sometime around early Sunday I avoided eye contact with Mum as they drove off. I hung onto your brother for a comfort I couldn’t get. The settee was too low and too soft, his voice a reminder, your rage searing through me, destroying, eating me up from the inside out just as it did to you

Sometime later I misplaced another small bottle of water as I swayed my way past the mural

Sometime in the afternoon I had minutes at home before our son came back. I noticed the TV and felt the raw pain tear up in my throat while my heart thundered and contracted before the doorbell broke through

Sometime around 4 p.m she didn’t know what to say like she didn’t when I first met her and everything was awkward

Sometime around the night I looked up at the rainbow you painted on our sons wall. The eyes in the letter O’s of  ‘My Room’ smiled down at me and I listened to his breathing

Sometime around Monday I listened to your brother spout on about his shiny new mini. The grotesque  carpark abyss, anchored weighted grey and cold in the relentless rain while my feet wouldn’t work

Sometime around the evening I looked at the images you couldn’t see. The narrow room of steely cabinets filed away our life as we sipped icy water

Sometime around the Tuesday car journey your Dad squeezed my shoulder as I replayed your chat on the doorstep

Sometime around afternoon I existed by your brother as our son played with the bead frame counting off the hard wooden seconds

Sometime around then I laboured with the time and the inclination

Sometime around later I gave the coffee back to her as she knelt by me with that expression

Sometime  around that moment their voices wouldn’t fade

Sometime around the evening they pushed me beyond the peeling mural to the relatives room, wheels squeaking on the sanitized floor.

Sometime after they bought me cardboard sandwiches. A pointless platter for my carcass

Nine months ago

I walked through the door, down the hall.  I dropped down close to him on the softness, I sat in my usual place and our son sat in yours. I took his hand and turned to face him.

xx