Friends
They found her in the garden
Hanging from a tree.
No text messages this time,
“I’ve done something stupid”
Or: “I’m scared”
No late-night phone calls
Ambulances, hospital beds
Or slow recovery.
She didn’t see the point, she said
(Some years before)
If we’re all going to die, why not now?
And we’d walk along the beach
Or lean over a coffee, above the crowds
And I would try to talk her out of it.
Sometimes she was happy, like the time
We went for a walk on the downs,
And the sun was high, my arm stiff in a plaster cast
And we ended up on the ground, her on top of me
Watched (to her amusement) by a passing deer.
But sometimes I’d talk to her, and she wasn’t there
Staring instead at some conjured creations
Or listening to the hated sounds
Sitting together, but separated
As though I was here, and she – trapped in a nightmare
I wished that I could help
But some horrors we can never share.