Harmonics

Like a private nightclub, this bright ambulance. Modular interior, glitter-futuristic fitted jewel box kitted out with drugs (theirs, yours in a bag grabbed from home). Spa recliner, straps, young paramedics like DJs, bouncers, sit-down comedians bantering about traffic. I stroke your tripping head while we ride backwards to the cancer choir, soprano wail and techno beat.

Inner zones of ER, curtains like field-tent flaps. Patients recline, royals enrobed at battle or fête, unspeaking or bellowing demands. One trills for absent Tom, a (long-dead?) spouse. In counterpoint, another laments feet no longer felt. All chorus for forbidden sips of water. Only ice chips, dear, say courtiers, busy with automata.

Mechanical birds. Yours in garish plumage, mini private coloratura atop a metal stand, others punctuating the dim forest beyond. Chart-topping screeches, forever rehearsing scales of one to ten in a crescendo of pain.

We’re in our own, last, air-conditioned nest. Your life flashing, I tell you micro stories all night against your death, while you macro-dose hydromorphone. My broken love, my storytelling failing . . . Do you want music? You say, no, more happiness. Music not happiness. You say, you’re the writer. Leaving me with all these words. When you left music, we knew the end. Head on rough pillow, turned towards me, you sink out of yourself, one ear, exquisite, attuned to earth, the other attuned to air.