👵👴

Where with a sea view and vows we started our nuptials full of joy and plenty of pale ale

Now we slither into separate tiny cots in an oldage home forgotten with faceless nurses, the fabric of our skin, breadlike and stale

Where once we would play online chess through bites of cheddar sandwiches, our unwashed selves hidden through the internet's comfortable veil

Now we stand too close in this infirmary bath sharing soap, sliced through the middle, all thanks to your weirdly sharp big toenail

Where being puzzled and brainstorming in the middle of an airport terminal: was it egg or chicken that came first and why the chicken crossed the road or was it rail

Now we samba with fingers on the shared bedside table, my phalange chubbiness against your papery thumbs, until our eyes give unto sleep, surrender to fail

Where it started sixty seven years ago with me checking you out and began to end fifty nine years later when you checked us into this jail

Now every day is a Sunday repeated in shadows of sunsets I half remember as nice and you misremember as too yellow: sights from that boat left alone to sail