Peter

Pierre mon frère, at the ending point now, you’ve slipped quietly out across this winter’s dry flood plains,  carrying a chisel, a paint brush and a pint pot,  all in a small string bag.

I can’t quite comprehend what use these things will be to you; to drink the last dregs of the amber sunlight this side of the wall? To carve your name in triplicate? As if we will forget. The smock that they have dressed you in is already covered in dust or in sand, chips falling from the brickwork.

For now you inhabit a small camp by the banks of our blood’s river (the flesh, after all, does look so much like grass). You will stay there until you think it’s safe to cross over.

Do you have enough coins in your pocket, dear cousin? There will be others who will need paying before too long. Your mother my Aunt, waits as always to scold you. My mother, your Aunt, smiling, waits to receive you.  My father,  your Uncle who always treated you as a son, gladly waits to receive you.

Don’t tarry dear Peter, mon chéri: but those here who love you might also say, don’t hurry. While we are all at a loss now to speak to you or for you,  we still desperately crave your company.

Sleep is the husk of a man lying slightly sidewise, covered with a hospital blanket, breathing in then out through an open mouth on a cool winter’s day before rain. His grieving wife sits quietly beside him.

The eyes are shuttered and without a tremor;  they cannot now see beyond the glass. Out there several hundred feet below, I can see the Parramatta River; it is too far away though on this afternoon to hear its waters singing.

Liverpool Hospital,  Western Plains,  Australia,  August 30th,  2018.