£350 million a week

Do open the shutter of the bedroom so that more light may enter – Goethe

it’s an unusually-busy night

for the ambulances so I check

that you’re still lucid and then get told

to call a taxi to A&E

which is unusually busy

for a weeknight at 7pm

and so we wait for hours get ushered

into the unusual brightness

of the triage room and then back out

to wait again as your body attempts

to come to terms with what's inside of it

and they decide it's best to send you home

until the vomiting begins

but the hospital wards are full

unusually overstretched with bodies

of the dying and the not-today-dying

so you are taken to a room

where an old man is crying out in his sleep

and a curtain is drawn between you

I sleep on the tiled floor like a dog

at your bedside at 5am an orderly

comes to take you to a ward and though

it isn’t yet visiting hours

unusually they allow me to stay

for a while a text comes through from home

that in the night our new niece arrived

into the world so much life arriving

every day too bright too bright I let you sleep



