You gave me hope when there was none,

from the misery in the mother and baby units

from my child's extraction, enraged breasts

useless. It was death, childbirth.

 

I too sat on the beach, at Southbourne

suicidal, with remorse reeking with illness;

I dug my fingers into the dark, cold sand,

and tussled with the need to stay awake.

 

I suppose the beach at Hastings was your choice

of a satisfactory sea, sheet still in the darkness

with the sanctity of surf, returning to shelter

or was it forseen in those salty tears shed alone?

 

We shared so many similarities of our sickness

of resistance and struggle within our strong souls

urging us to undo. And then we climbed

back up, an ill-defined slope until

 

you, at last, have done what I have longed to do,

to put an end to this senseless insoluble trial

that floats like black holes in the brain. And keep on

collapsing, not with the promise of new life

 

which never arise as stars in the Universe,

but the dustbins of the earth; empaths who soak

up the troubles of an undeserving world

into their ancient oracle souls.

 

And here we'll sell, ourselves out, not caring

whether we live longer or turn to dust, do housework

make dinners, hold hands, seize moments

from the diabolical odds of mental distress, leaving time

 

to measure the lives who remain unrealised;

the kids left behind, and wives and husbands angered;

and they'll die, like a shadow of their

former selves, just as if Sally never existed;

 

but I will not forget her, or why,

because I am her and she is I.