Saturday Today... All Day

I wake up without you,
and it’s your birthday.
Somewhere else,
you’re still asleep,
alongside someone
who is not me,
while a bloodshot sun climbs through haze,
struggling above the rooves behind the house,
and paints my hallway
red.
I wake up,
and it’s your birthday,
and I don’t feel like lying in bed this morning,
knowing that,
somewhere else,
you’re going to get up
and get dressed
and get on with a day
that has nothing to do with me.
I wake up alone,
and it’s your birthday,
and the room is cold in spite of the sunlight.
The house is quiet except for radiator gurgles,
electric hum,
and I’m glad of it:
I’d rather be alone in private,
while I come to terms
with the strange, uncomfortable fit of the day,
like an oversized shoe,
slipping
and raising blisters.
I wake up,
and my mouth is already filled
with the sharp taste of missing you,
and even before I open my eyes,
I know
what the date is,
and again there’s that cold trickle of loss,
that plummeting sucker-punch
of remembering
you’ve gone.
I wake up in a bed that feels emptier than usual,
and spend those first few moments of consciousness
losing you
all over again.
From the open window:
scratchy birdsong; a far-off hungry chorus of dogs;
stuttering footsteps and traffic noises;
the dawn shift going to work
- business as usual -
as though today
was the same
as any other.
In a couple of hours,
the letterbox will rattle,
and I’ll hear the flat, dull slap
of bills and bank statements
spat onto the carpet,
or the telephone will ring,
and I’ll ignore it.
I wake up,
and it’s your birthday,
somewhere.