"I can't do a love song, like the way it's meant to be..."

('Romeo and Juliet' — Dire Straits)

We listen to the same song, looking through different windows:
I am a child, in backseat shadow, underneath the streetlights
and the rainfall of those opening bars of guitars and sax. You

are awake enough to press your morphine pump, and watch
the only lighted window in the building opposite hoping someone
steps out of the shade, a sign that you're not alone. Crowd noise

shimmers and Mum drives beneath an underpass, indigo
then orange as a satellite dish, curving to hear me sing I love you
like the stars above as we drive home from hospital. You, still

plugged into monitors and your earphones and a saline drip
hanging from a hook, which you wheel for your first shower,
your new scarred body under the hot jet. You used to sing

for us in the nooks of car journeys, caravan bunks. And I forget
that you will not be at home, and I miss you like a movie song.

Sam Butler 2025