Sheets
You’re so tired of sitting up,
they’re making up the death bed:
pumping up the air-mattress; unfolding
and flapping and smoothing and tucking
the sheets. White. White for the birthing-bed
– alpha – and first communion, starched white
for the shirts for your very first job,
white for the wedding, hotel-white
tight on the mattresses of all your infidelities,
white in your hair, reams of white
from your lady solicitor: Last Will and
Testament – never quite finished; and white
in the roundel of omega, the end.
White is both confession and absolution.
It will recite your Hail Marys for you.
White is a brimming colour. It can do
anything. It wells up and flows away
but remains itself, self-replenishing,
a life-history, which touches me,
as it embraces you, one last time,
on the heels, the pelvis, the shoulder blades,
the skull. They smooth and fold
the upper sheet under your chin.
Your cocoon is brighter than anything.
It is all light. You will dissolve in it.
Page(s) 43
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