On the way to your dying – by Leslie Casey

We’ve become an island. Distant from the moon moving the tides,
the wind blowing rain in a slant song through the night. Dogs bark,
crocuses slip out of season, Friends offer, how are you? on the way
to their plans, as though looking in their rear-view mirrors. We are here,
you and I, in rooms with pictured walls, lamp-cast shadows. Light, thin-
sliced through the venetians, criss-crosses your body pillow-nested on the bed.
The only weight you can bear, leaving me when it dims and darkens,
to make tea, take off the day as if it were as easy as unbuttoning a shirt,
tossing the losses on the back of a chair. In this space between lifetimes
I tuck you in at night, feel your breath puff against my skin as you whisper,
Tomorrow I’ll bring you coffee in bed. Telling me—holding as tight as I can—
the only way you know.

Leslie Casey lives and writes north of Toronto.