Poetry

You Come Back

Musings prompted by Margaret Atwood

You come back
into the room where
I’ve been
living all along.

You think;
nothing has changed
recognizing the wallpaper, décor, the
fragrance of the place, the subtle music
from the stereo, the art of tower-
bridge, your open-armed chair
waiting, quietly and patiently, for you
to fill it.
You think;
everything is just as it was
last spring, last year, five, ten,
thirty-seven years ago,
            I don’t know when.
Though you do wonder how
the leaky tap got fixed, and who
kept the chimney clean in your
absence.

When you arrive,
your footsteps, soft and dark,
reopening, awaken me,
as you bring me breakfast in bed,
holding it out to me,
your hand, a plate.

No. I have lost my appetite.

You can’t come back.
I have not been sleeping all this time.

Nothing is the same. 

Alison Gibbons