He sits, folded into the old armchair like a worn out rag,

Bones pressing through his skin,

Skin pressing into time.

The room seems to lean inward,

Walls heavy with silence and regret,

The ceiling sags with secrets from long ago.

Worthless but at the same time priceless objects clutter the shelves,

A painted toy soldier with a missing foot,

A cracked mug from some long forgotten holiday,

Some plastic flowers sun bleached to a kind of grey.

Junk to anyone else

But to him they hum with voices

They hold tiny hands, laughter

And the smell of his darling wife’s hair in the summer.

He doesn’t cry.

There is nothing left that tears can do.

Fear coils in the corners of his mind,

Not actually fear of death, but of vanishing.

Of no one remembering how he loved to whistle,

Or the time he went dancing barefoot in the rain.

His chest rises then falls, then stutters.

He thinks of her, his wife,

How she left in her sleep,

With no sound and no warning,

Leaving a feeling of absence,

Like a beautiful song finished too early.

The pain has worn him thin,

Not just physically but mentally,

There is no meaning left in meals,

No colour in his days.

He has forgotten the sound of laughter,

Even his name seems borrowed somehow.