The First Day - Stamping the Memory

I drive away and leave him in the home,

someone else undressing him so he can have a rest

in his new hotel-like room

even though we have only recently arrived.

  I turn the key in the front door. 

I feel stunned and slow in my own house

these first few moments 

as if I have dropped something boulder-like.

I drag the cumbersome green canvas umbrella out of the shed

and sit in the circle of shade it makes on the patio.

I sit for a long time gazing into the dazzling heat of the garden.

I don't know what to think

how to feel

without the great tight scaffolding

of care that usually 

keeps me tidily in place.

So I pour fizzy water over a clump of ice cubes,

 and read the last chapters of my sad book

  keeping my toes out of the sun,

and whizz up a garlicky pungent salsa verde 

and splatter it across my left -overs salad

and eat it 

as if I'd never tasted a salad before.

Then I creep into bed

and sleep for hours and hours.

the obliterating sleep of the heart wounded

and the drunk.

Till  the burning sun filtering through the blinds onto my legs

and the noise of  our neighbours arguing about their boiler

ping pongs through the open window

and wakes me.

I can't shake  off this unfamiliar oddness of not doing all the things I usually do

at this time of the day.

So much later I put a salmon steak under the grill

and Elvis on the CD player

and I let my body remember those moves

which aren't bending and wiping

which aren't lifting arms up or pulling

pants down

or jumpers off

or stretching for the seat belt 

or  towel drying feet.

My body remembering to dance

just for me

my feet bare

with their soles dirty

stamping the memory of some old forgotten  rhythm

dormant inside me

out onto the hardness 

of the kitchen floor.