In Another Life

As is her way, she knocks
on my open door,
this woman of the world

but, not even she has the answer.

“What’s the point?” I ask her.
“I’m all in. Up to here
with methadone - morphine
and the like."

After twenty years, I’ve had enough.
I’m done with fighting.

She whispers in my ear,
“Something tells me
you’ll be out of here, soon,”
as she dries my tears and hers
on her sleeve.

“There is a better place,” she says.
Tells me it’s my call. Up to me
to decide where that will be.

I thumb through a book
on the table by my bed –
a guide to Madagascar. Somewhere
she and I had planned to visit
in the April of next year.

It falls open at a picture
of a Baobab tree, of which
we’d often spoken.

A magic tree that never dies,
but that one day
simply ceases to be.

I dream
I climb inside its massive trunk –
curl up for ever and for ever …
until she comes by.

Her place, kept warm, beside me.