And then, one day, he was gone.
And all his tubes were gone, and his tissues,
And his petulant but forgivable demands.
And she could clean behind his chair:
Cobwebs, dropped spoons, creased and ancient magazines.
She could go off to sleep
without waking to check if he was still breathing,
because he wasn’t.
She could leave the house for more than one hour,
And she didn’t have to lift his wheelchair
and his oxygen tank
into the boot of the car
in all weathers
even when she was sick.
And she could give all his identical shirts to charity,
And she could remember the man she met,
not the patient.
And she could live.