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I drink a glass of water,
pick up orange juice
and a box of jaffa cakes.
Resolved, I take breath
and walk towards that room where she lays
- my auntie, half asleep, with window
open and twisting fan, on slow.


I push open the door to see
her arm reach for invisibility,
lifting white skin and outside veins
up to her mouth with a clawlike hand;
mouthing a vacant biscuit,
toothless. Gazing up at the ceiling
she says ‘I went in a straight line’,
grasps the air-as-biscuit again - and eats.


A moment in suspension, calm, I sit.
She’s hungry. Now I feed her cake
and juice-from-a straw while she stares at a distant place;
describes animals, owls and
monkeys, parrots, lions on the prowl,
indifferent to my blind looking
and, as the sweetness falls, she closes eyes,
adores the chocolate biscuit sinking down.
Frail as a white stick, she still
can feel
its love.