FIRST LASTS
There is blue in the sky today.
Blue, and warmth,
And the sound of birds.
These are the things that I can focus on.
The thing about lasts
Is that you don’t know at the time.
They are always just there...
... until, suddenly, they’re not.
I am living in the time of first lasts.
The last time he tied a tie, rode his motorbike, climbed a ladder, fixed a tap.
The last time he could run his fingers though his hair.
All the lasts we never thought we’d see.
He spends his days reading silently now,
Or staring at the television,
His sense of humour fading in the face of the last, the last, the last.
And foreknowledge lies coldly upon me like the night,
Twisting its lover’s hands painfully into my hair.
It falls thickly on my limbs like sheets,
With the memory I carry like a too-heavy coat I cannot shed
Of the last time that everything was going to be okay.
It seems unfitting
That there should be blue in the sky today.
© mjc 16 August 2015
