Thermal

	Morning, you lay sleeping
	Your small body clinging tightly to mine
	With frightening dependency
	Life defining, impossible to betray
	And with that…
	The mattress rose
	Set adrift on the burgeoning emotional tide
	Colliding with the once stationary objects
	Of an uninhabited life
	What had been concealed
	Was exhaled from god knows where
	Colour-drained, unsalvageable
	Shape shifting
	And, with function relinquished
	Resigned from service
	Two blue sleeping bags
	Nudged against one another
	Bearing the once warm imprint of our bodies
	The sun-baked stone garden
	Retracted its promise
	It was cold in that place of perpetual summer
	If you were afraid you didn’t show it
	You who were born bearing the face
	Of irrepressible grief
	So as not to disappoint you
	I lay motionless
	Rapt by the rise and stall of your breathing
	Your fingertips and thighs
	Quietly affirming my place at your side.

	Morning, you lay sleeping
	Your small body clinging tightly to mine
	With frightening dependency
	Life defining, impossible to betray
	And with that
	The mattress rose
	Set adrift on the burgeoning emotional tide
	Colliding with the once stationary objects
	Of an uninhabited life
	What had been concealed
	Was exhaled from god knows where
	Colourdrained, unsalvageable
	Shape shifting
	And, with function relinquished
	Resigned from service
	Two blue sleeping bags
	Nudged against one another
	Bearing the once warm imprint of our bodies
	The sunbaked stone garden
	Retracted its promise
	It was cold in that place of perpetual summer
	If you were afraid you didn' t show it
	You who were born bearing the face
	Of irrepressible grief
	So as not to disappoint you
	I lay motionless
	Rapt by the rise and stall of your breathing
	Your fingertips and thighs
	Quietly affirming my place at your side.