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After all the nights you left me in a room with the baby

to sleep elsewhere

and only the wind shifting through the curtains,

to drown out the disconsolate sea.

After following the furniture truck to my own place and

breast-feeding on the floor, too sick to unpack the boxes;

this on the day you put your dog down,

her untreated wound teeming with maggots.

After all the sorrow, and I have not forgotten

how you placed my hand on our son’s head

as he crowned between my legs

and how you held me through the pain.

Your mother died, and you flew to England

to burn her body; we took you to the airport

your boy, a dancing heart and I, a survivor.

I touched your shoulder in the departures hall.

Love is a continuum

it arcs in a trajectory of loss,

we follow it unknowing

towards an indefinite end.