Neighbour (April 1)

I'm putting out recycling
telling off the dog, she's barking
at the gate - see
my neighbour for the first time
in three months. For three months
he's been at his daughter's bedside.
He tells me they took
a haemorrhage the size of her hand
through a window in her skull.
It's not the sort of talk
we have - our words are
not strokes, bleeds, hearts, infections.
We go in our front doors
and close them - our words are small -
weather or the moss in the guttering.