Room 14

Room fourteen has a window that looks out on the car park,

and a chair that folds out flat, and a radiator that ticks.

They put a whiteboard on the wall with the name of today's nurse.

Today it's Bea. It's been Bea a lot. She's good.

You slept from two till six and I watched the whole thing,

which is a stupid thing to do, and I would do it again.

There's a jug of water nobody is going to drink

and a bag of your clothes that I keep folding.

I've learned the vocabulary. I never wanted it.

I can tell you what "comfortable" means now, and what it doesn't.

I know how many hours since, and what the numbers mean,

and I have stopped asking Bea the question that I ask.

Your hand doesn't hold back anymore. That was last Thursday.

I still put mine in it. I put mine in it now.

And I talk about the garden, and the dog, and next-door's roof,

because the last thing I'm going to do is make this heavy.

And the machine says what the machine says —

it says it steady, it says it fair,

it counts the ordinary distance

between the here and the not-there.

And I am not arguing with it,

I have read the folder, I know the odds —

I'm just going to sit right here in this chair

and be a warm thing next to a cooling one.

That's all. That's the whole plan.

That's all I've got.

You said one thing at four in the morning, and it wasn't profound,

you said, "Is it raining?" and it was, and I said so,

and you made a sound like a person hearing good news,

and then you slept. And that was the last one. That was it.

Not "I love you." Not a speech. Not a summing-up.

Just the weather. Just the ordinary weather.

And I would not trade it for the greatest sentence ever spoken.

It was you. Still you. Right up to the last inch of you.

And the machine says what the machine says,

and it isn't wrong, and it isn't cruel,

it just tells the room the temperature

and it lets the room decide what to do.

So I'm holding a hand that doesn't hold back

in a room with a whiteboard and a chair,

and it's raining, love. It's still raining.

I'm still here. I'm still here.