“You will hear thunder and remember me,
and think: she wanted storms...”
― Anna Akhmatova

 

She said to me:
If you hear thunder
Pray for me
And remember we loved to listen to a thunderstorm
Whilst we were here in bed together.

Outside, the sky was much the same
the weather drained of color,
shocked into the routine drift and swell
of another rocky road to hell.

The strip of sky I can see from my hospital bed above the motorway
Will do for me. The nurses are so kind and tired beneath their PPE.
Except one who is a demon.
Always on night shift, she is

In my dreams I am solid red
More like a nightmare-hallucination
That will wreck my sleep forever:
Side-effects, nothing but side-effects.

And my heart will then be free —
But I do not trust information — nor transformation —
So we will live like fire, fleetingly, warm.

Something good will happen one day
When I leave this land forever
Whatever the politics, or the weather,
I will rush into the arms
of all my shadowed images of you.

"Douleur exquise"