TURBINE | KAPOHAU

HARRY RICKETTS

 

Last Day

 

The nine-letter Dom Post Target word
is ‘Purgatory’. I hold

your hand. The veins are thick, dark rivers.
Your mouth a wide O;

your breath, quick, snatching at air.
It’s much too warm in here.

You would hate me to see you like this:
so gaunt, so vulnerable.

This morning, as I climbed the steps,
a parakeet, red waistcoat,

yellow stomacher, was piping its heart out.
‘Her heart’s tired,’ the doctor says.

My fingers sting with pins and needles.
Your face has sunk to bone.