Undying: A Love Story Read online

  banana muffins, bagels, sandwiches in cellophane,

  expensive flavoured water, nuts.

  But then, defences down, I’m

  skewered in the guts.

  There, on a tray, in a glassed-in display,

  dolmades.

  Vine leaves.

  Dozens of them.

  The real deal, plump and crudely-shapen,

  sweating olive oil, lasciviously green.

  Your eyes light up, I hear your voice,

  excited, child-like, at this great surprise.

  You want dolmades, you’d forgotten how

  consumingly you loved them.

  ‘Oh, can we get some? Please?’

  You did not speak, and I did not reply.

  An hour remains until they let me fly.

  You are here with me, silently

  wanting, hoping, yearning, thirsting,

  craving, lusting, pining, waiting.

  I do not buy dolmades.

  I do not buy

  dolmades.

  My First Date After You

  (For Ann Patty)

  In a restaurant, I wait

  for a woman.

  My first date

  after you.

  I know that she and I will kiss,

  embrace, make approving noises

  about the weather,

  assess the damage to our faces,

  the weight we’ve failed to lose

  these ten years since

  our previous get-together.

  She arrives, slightly late,

  and we do all of the above.

  After lunch, we take a walk

  in the sunshine without you,

  enjoying New York.

  I have no shame in my agenda:

  to pump her for memories;

  to talk about you.

  That’s all I want from everyone,

  everywhere I go:

  to talk about you,

  to venerate our love.

  Now, reflecting on those hours I spent,

  in the restaurant and in the park,

  I draw a blank. What did she say?

  Bless her, she forgave my scant attention

  to her life, accepted that her job was just to mention

  all she was able to retrieve about my wife.

  She did her best, I’ve reason to believe –

  but not a word has stuck.

  The over-bright sun: I remember that.

  Her devilish grin, undimmed by age.

  Handing her the photo of you, in bed

  with her dog. (That dog, she said, is still alive.)

  Hard as I strive, I can’t remember more.

  Holy fuck –

  You died just eighty days before,

  and I was in no state

  for that first date.

  You Chose So Well

  I walk into the flat you chose for us,

  and the way the sunlight falls

  on the tangerine walls, the nooks and alcoves

  and the uncollected mail,

  makes me want to tell you,

  You chose well.

  The sixty-two stairs

  were the sole drawback, a bridge

  to be crossed when we were old.

  The light and space up there

  was worth the climb.

  So, in the meantime:

  Sold.

  A few years in,

  you had to stop halfway

  to gather oxygen.

  On those grey steps, you got stabbed

  in the legs

  by delinquent veins.

  After your transplant, I placed

  a chair on each landing, rungs on the ladder

  up to the bedroom shadowed

  by treetops, circled by seagulls.

  Towards the end, your sojourns here grew

  scarce; your blood preferred

  the ground floor B&B, and later

  the clinic with its elevator.

  A tenant took the room where you once perched

  contented at the window, looking down

  on streetlife in the lamplit night.

  And now, I enter our domain, unfazed

  by those sixty-two steps, dazed by the colours.

  You chose them and I painted them.

  Our bed still overlooks the chimneytops.

  The light still casts its spell.

  My love, you chose so well.

  Risotto

  You bought too many wigs.

  All that luxurious soft hair,

  slightly second-hand,

  in boxes.

  Too sad to keep.

  Too intimate to sell.

  Too valuable to throw away.

  What am I supposed to do?

  You bought too many clothes.

  So many multiples of the same

  cancer-friendly tops,

  oedema-friendly tights,

  myopathy-friendly socks,

  accident-friendly undies,

  nighties you never even wore

  and hated

  in a range of colours.

  You accumulated

  too many phones too many pairs of glasses too many

  emery boards too many nail clippers too many

  lip salves too many battery chargers too many

  toothpicks too many cameras too many

  kohl sticks too many shoes mouthwashes razors

  combs odd socks bottles of Boots No.7

  unlabelled keys to God knows what locks

  in what places I will never be again

  if indeed I was ever there.

  You always cooked too much food.

  Loads of leftovers went into the freezer

  for another day, except that on another day

  you cooked afresh, and again too much.

  Today I took out your last risotto

  and savoured every swallow,

  every grain of what was once

  a storage problem,

  and how I wish there was enough

  for more.

  Your Plants

  Hey, listen:

  can I let your plants die?

  I never knew their names,

  where they came from, or how high

  they were supposed to grow,

  how dry their veins could stand to go.

  They’ve loitered in the bathroom like

  shabby derelicts, unshiftable and frail,

  waiting without hope for passersby

  to take pity.

  I am the water man.

  I am the man with the water.

  I am the man who stands in the shower,

  twenty inches from those plants,

  weeping into the torrent,

  all that liquid plenty down the plughole

  while your plants, brown and stoic,

  watch.

  Hey, listen:

  I never asked for them.

  I never promised anything.

  I made no pledge to nurse those leaves, those buds,

  those mad green shoots on the parched stumps,

  those silent thankyous for a cupful of attention

  sloshed into their cobwebby soil

  three weeks ago, or was it

  five?

  I never said I’d keep your plants alive.

  The Tower

  ‘As far as the tower,’ you’d say

  in those days when you could still walk

  by my side, on the path to Balanroich.

  The tower, a skeletal Eiffel, full of electricity,

  marked the limit of your energy.

  You’d set off from our house, rugged-up

  against the elements. The breeze tugged at

  your wig, your raincoat was too big,

  your faithful sheepskin boots hugged

  your poor unfeeling feet.

  ‘As far as the tower,’ you’d say.

  It was, at most, three hundred yards away.

  Once upon a time, you’d barely notice


  such a distance, in your haste to move.

  But in those last two years

  you only wished to prove

  the wheelchair was not always

  necessary.

  Today, alone, in spring, I take the air

  that you no longer breathe.

  Unfit, overweight, I’m still in better shape

  than you were when you walked with me.

  I pause beside the tower, gauge its height,

  Squint against the morning light.

  Birds flit around in pairs, the trees show off

  their leaves, encouraged by the sun.

  A plastic bag over my head, and half a dozen

  morphine ampoules past their Use-By date

  should be enough, I think.

  I will not go as far

  as chemotherapy, I swear.

  No one can make me go there.

  I have – you know damn well – my reasons.

  I’ll be the master of my destiny.

  Who knows? The cancer that’s reserved for me

  may even be a kind that lets me climb

  this tower, beyond the barbed wire,

  beyond the highest branches

  of the trees you loved to see.

  Spring. Spring. Blur of green.

  How you savoured all these birches.

  You kept track of their progress through the seasons

  and, latterly, they marked your waning power.

  ‘As far as that tree.’

  ‘As far as that bend in the path.’

  ‘As far as the tower.’

  Do Not Launder Or Dry Clean, Do Not Use With Helpless Person, Infant Or Person Insensitive To Heat, No Serviceable Parts Inside

  One of our electric blankets

  has become passive-aggressive;

  it threatens indolently

  to kill me.

  We kept them going 24/7, year in year out,

  to give the cats a treat, or just

  in case we felt like making love.

  Now mine has had enough.

  Most of it has stopped working; one corner

  under my shoulder and another under my shin

  are lightbulb-hot. Each morning, I wonder

  if I’m imagining it. I stroke my palms

  where I have lain, note the coolness

  right next to the heat. Eventually

  I lift the sheet, lift the suspect, and find

  a faint scorch on the mattress,

  an embryonic blush of burn

  on the surface of a forty-kilo block

  of flammable stuffing.

  I do nothing.

  I continue, nightly, to braise

  my shoulder and my calf.

  What sweet rescue if a stroke

  of electricity dispatched me in my sleep.

  What blessed relief if this whole room

  were consumed in flames and smoke.

  My very own, home-made

  crematorium.

  Weeks pass. I compromise.

  I switch the blanket off when

  I’m not lying on it; I concede

  it would be a shame to stand outside and watch

  our house burn down with all your things in it.

  In fact, I grow a bit obsessive-compulsive:

  Keys, wallet, have I switched off the blanket?

  But still, each night, I lay me down to

  tempt fate. In time, I can even feel

  the hidden pattern of the wires.

  At last, good sense prevails.

  I pull the hazard off the mattress,

  throw it in the trash, and, with my hands, admit

  that you will not be coming back

  to your side of this bed; I shift

  your electric blanket an arm’s length to the right,

  and for the first time since you went into the furnace

  your space is cold at night.

  My body lies safe now, with just a thin sheet

  between me and the thing that kept you snug.

  Just a thin sheet

  between me and your menstrual blood,

  me and the marks

  we made together.

  Proliferation

  Your inbox is riddled with it.

  Your system overrun

  with matter that’s no use to anyone.

  When you were alive, real humans

  sometimes emailed you.

  Those days are gone.

  Your friends know better.

  Now only algorithms chatter.

  It’s been a long time, Eva, they remark.

  I hesitate to call this spam.

  Solicited, the bulk of it.

  CancerCompass Newsletter.

  Oncology Daily Digest.

  Leukemia Alert.

  You had so many hours of dark

  to fill, while I retired to get my rest.

  By day, we talked of literature and cats;

  by night, you crunched the stats.

  The march of science goes on.

  CancerNetwork has a slideshow.

  eChemist has a sale that ends at five.

  Take action Eva, make your choice.

  LAST CHANCE, EVA, for free delivery.

  This Week In Oncology is pleased to announce

  a brand new paper on tumour metastasis.

  Dial-in at 5pm Eastern Time to ask a question LIVE

  about high-risk myeloma and its prognosis.

  So many words I didn’t know were even words,

  like ‘apoptosis’, ‘atresia’, ‘intravasation’ . . .

  Your inbox pullulates with this stuff.

  The senders have no way of knowing

  you have had enough.

  Barley Fields, Fearn, 16 August, 8 O’Clock

  The light is how you like it:

  stealthy in its beauty.

  Dusk is scheduled in ten minutes;

  shadows queue to do their duty.

  Our window view is dulling down

  with nothing special in it.

  But no: beyond the house, beyond the trees,

  beyond the shadows’ limits,

  the fields are joyous and absurdly bold,

  each bale of straw a block of gold,

  the mile-high stubble drenched in dayglow,

  the sun imbued in everything.

  This was the yellow that you flew

  ten thousand miles to stalk.

  This was the yellow that you captured

  on your tripod-laden walks so many years ago,

  in prints of Cibachrome;

  this landscape with light to burn,

  this place you vowed would be your home.

  And now they’re here again.

  See! In plain view and illicit

  as always, for ten minutes only.

  Slip some shoes on and run!

  Let’s go see the show.

  Let’s photograph the sun.

  Blink and you’ll miss it.

  Put your shoes on.

  Put your shoes on.

  The light is how you like it.

  Where on earth are you? I have gathered

  all your shoes together, and the night

  must fall

  on time.

  Kodachrome (b. 1935 – d. 2009)

  The borrowed slide projector comes

  with a screen bigger than me,

  heavy, rolled up in itself, a monster,

  like my sorrow.

  I decide to let it lie

  untouched. I wait for night

  and activate the clump of Bakelite

  (it works! it whirrs! it groans with age!)

  and shine a square of pallid light

  straight from the ancient lens

  onto the couch, the wall, a sketchbook page,

  and finally, the best solution:

  a canvas of pure, woven white,

  a painting that you never made.

  Here, on that blankness that you meant to fill,

 
I see your adolescent self, frozen, still.

  In the backyard where your dolls were burned,

  behind the house where your mum was bashed,

  and holes were kicked in plasterboard

  and prayers were offered to the Lord

  (none of which these slides archive),

  you stand, unknowable, alive.

  Here’s you with cat held to your chest

  (the breasts I loved are yet to sprout).

  Here’s you with husband number one

  when you were courting, goofy, blessed

  by the Jehovah’s Witnesses,

  snapped outside the Kingdom Hall.

  How big his teeth, how small his eyes!

  How thick your glasses, and how ill-advised

  your hairstyle, tweedy jacket, dress.

  The time since then has showed he would remain

  himself, but older and more beetle-browed.

  You, at first so plain, grew gorgeous with the years

  and, by the time we met, attained your best.

  We flourished after Kodachrome.

  No slides preserve our happiness.

  It ought to be enough, this glimpse,

  on empty canvas in this empty home.

  This gadget can be borrowed more than once,

  and I can see again your foreign face,

  your awkward, unfamiliar grin.

  The slide itself takes up no space.

  And yet, I feel this image is on loan;

  I want to own, to access, to possess.

  I get you focused on the canvas plane

  and, with my camera, click you through

  onto the memory card within.

  I shut the old projector down.

  Its motor lapses, comatose.

  I coil the cords, I cap the lens,

  I stow the plastic carousels

  and sheathe in styrene moulds the ends

  of this unwieldy piece of kit.

  Fit it back into its box.

  No closure, and that cat you cuddled?

  Gone, the canvas white and pure,

  poised on the sofa where you do not sit

  in the house where you no longer live

  in a world where you are nothing more

  than an exposure, bits

  of pixel and emulsion,

  invisible and safely stored.

  Your lost past.

  My forlorn compulsion.

  Trying It On

  I have this fantasy.

  It has the flimsy, dreamy logic

  of a porn flick.

  An unknown woman turns up at my house,

  knocks on the door. She needs

  no explanation. I lead her

  straight into the bedroom.

  She unzips her coat. Another knock.

  Another woman. And another.

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  With the merest nod, they enter.

  A dozen women, all not unlike you.