Artwork by Kent Harley

As if this life is not short enough,
a thief now looms to cut
this moment of a lifetime
to a spark no one else will celebrate
but the two of us,
because we smell like
home to each other.

If this crook takes my body now,
and I am not here when you turn eighty,
If this crook withers me to nothing before
I get to say I love you a million times – I’m sorry.
If in forty, fifty years I am not there to say –
“Look baby we made it.”
Know that I would have rather stayed,
and frayed, and greyed,
and turn silver with you.
Watch the sun set on us,
our veins drained from our youth.

When your skin has turned into
soft wrinkled peaks,
And you miss how your shoulders
cradle my round jelly cheeks,
On a clear night, my darling –
open your hand into the air,
And by firefly or by stardust, I promise
I will be there.

—

Joan Cruz is a Filipino nurse and poet based in the UK. She loves coffee, sunshine, and days out in the ocean. Farewell Note is part of a larger poetry collection titled Moments that Made Us: a nursing memoir.

More by this writer:

• Your Heroine: Poem by a Nurse During the Pandemic

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