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Sarah Law

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Application

Jean sits rocking on the unmade bed.
She’s been out for a meal, the second
of the day, although it’s only three.

She insists her figure’s grossness
is because of fluid. Some of it runs
from her eyes, as she stares at dust.

She fingers the pile of Michael’s records:
discs in the wrong sleeves now, and hardly played
since he died. She thinks about

the hospital sheets, the way they keep her
in all day when she’s ill again.
The nurse comes round to inject her,

but somehow it feels all wrong:
the nurse is a girl in a woman’s uniform,
the beds like too-tight envelopes, and she

starts to shout when politely asking for help.
But she’s free at the moment. Confusingly,
the sun is in and out. Her bills are crumpled into balls.

She comes to me like this sometimes,
and I don’t throw her out. Her moods
are heavy weather, end-of-tether storms,

And all I can do is accept her clumsy offers
of help, and give her tea in a faceless cup.
This eases us both, like women folding linen:

There is that quiet smoothness she once knew,
an insubstantial shake of the dowdy tea-cloth,
circulars sealed up carefully, waiting to go.

 

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