Birthday Elegy For Friends and Family: Many thanks for your kind birthday wishes I gather your wishes, gentle gifts that arrive like sunlight warming winter’s silent ground. On this birthday, each word you sent glimmers with kindness that softens edges of sorrow. Anne, my beloved, sits near, her eyes bright though the storm of..
Our Last Birthday Together: St. Vincent’s Hospital Palliative Care Unit, March 10, 2026 The nurses brought in the birthday breakfast with quiet hands, the early light of dawn trembling, uncertain, like the hush in Anne’s voice. Anne smiled, the skin around her lips softening as if time could not bear to bruise her further…
The Cruelty of Daylight-Saving Time For Anne, in the thinning light Daylight saving arrives; they tell us to spring forward, to claim another hour of sun, but I watch the clock betray us, an hour stolen, not earned. Anne, your strength dwindling as the calendar hurries on; the world insists on more light but..
For Anne, Who Still Loves the Soundscape of Dr. Seuss In the thinning light of evening, your hands still reach for colours that rhyme. The gentle tumble of Seuss’s words spills like bright marbles across the quiet hospital room. Perhaps they remind you that the world can stay playful, even when the body forgets how…
Anne Listens to the Ethereal Music of Ludovico Einaudi In the hush of evening’s slow retreat, Anne drifts on gentle piano tides; Notes unfold like soft blankets, tracing memories over the contours of her quiet room. Every chord holds a breath, a promise, spilling light into corners where fear once gathered. Einaudi’s music enters..
Pieces of Our Love: Life’s Puzzle for Anne Each day, Anne turns the cardboard squares over, edges searching for edges, her fingertips remembering the shape of wholeness long before the picture is clear. Puzzles are her refuge now, when words sometimes stumble and days dissolve, unthreading their careful patterns. She fits colour to colour,..
Grieving in Slow Motion Slow-motion grieving, the hours pooling thick as honey, Each heartbeat stretched, diluted in a nightmare where Anne’s laughter echoes through the hospital’s hush. The world blurs: I move as if underwater, amputated slowly, limb by limb, no anaesthetic, pain refusing to subside, the promise of waking never kept. Time is..
Falling in Love with another Anne Or how I’ve fallen madly in love with the same, yet radically different, woman twice Once feisty Anne, her laughter sharp, opinion a shield, principle her armour, she’d pace the halls of life, anxiety folded taut, but neat, beneath a silk scarf, eyes tracing the lines of every..
Anne’s Smile A poem of resilience and wonder Anne lies beneath the shadow, the whisper of brain cancer curling in her mind. Yet each morning, she greets the world with a smile – warm taffy, slow and sweet, suffusing everything around her with serene light. Her smile – unbidden, luminous – drifts across rooms,..
A Woman with Heart For Anne, this Valentine’s Day A heart in every room – stone, cloth, glass – Anne, collector of the world’s pulse, your shelves hold tributes, tender and small, while your own heart, the true north in this house, expires quietly beneath hospital lights. You taught me to find heart everywhere:..