So To Bed

So, to bed


the first time, she is shocked by the space -
a whole continent she never explored.

She stays put, clings tightly to old habits,
changes nothing.

She wakes up on the other side anyway
and it seems to her she’s woken

on the moon, strange and unfamiliar.
It unravels her, layer by layer

leaving her in streams across
the bedroom floor.

the second time, she lies in the middle
and realises the sheets still smell

of him, odd mix of sea salt, pine
tree, cone and resin. She dreams

his hands are ghosting over her
soothing her to sleep.

the third time, she settles in on his side,
molds herself to the imprint

he’s left in the memory mattress.
She brings a film, tea, chocolate

handkerchiefs and one of his sweaters -
she’s determined to stay there for ever

safe in this place where the inevitable
is put off for a moment.

It lasts
three weeks until

well meaning friends tell her
enough.

They change the sheets,
wash her hair, her clothes

and make her endless cups of tea
so she can talk about it.

Which she does until her throat
bleeds from talking words that cut

and scratch and fight their way out
through the silence he’s left.

in time she thinks about replacement
a new bed, a new man, a new life

they call it moving on. And sometimes
she does for a while.

But she can never quite decide
to part with their bed.

years later, when turning the mattress
she finds a sock. An old, blue sock.

A sock with a hole in the toe
that’s accumulated fluff and somehow

she knows this is it, the sock
he was searching for that day -

the day he took his bike to work
and never came back.