Weekend Away

A landlady with sour lips, mistrustful eyes…
I lay beside you in pink nylon sheets
and rubbed you warm in your feverish chill,
curving against your side, asking nothing.
That closeness could not dispel your fever,
or the barriers between us.
Earlier that day
we'd clambered on muddy stones to reach
the poet's house, tucked in beneath a cliff,
the sea exploding into air like alcohol into
the veins. No trace here of the man who would
drink himself to death. Next morning,
the journey home, choking with separateness,
mile after violent mile, covering no new
ground, moving back into old darknesses.