Aubade
Aubade - Vidyan Ravinthiran
Aubade
It’s Saturday, but you haven’t slept in,
Your side of the bed still warm.
My hangover is like a smashed windscreen.
I hear a repeated noise down the corridor.
One surface determinedly rubs another.
While asleep, I picked my lip ‘til it bled.
A side effect of the medication.
Like the gravid – if sledgehammer obvious – nightmare.
Your body walks in, completely naked.
This is how you prefer to clean the bathroom.
And though my plan was for inertia.
I understand today where to redeem the time.
The sound of the curtains yanked apart.
Is the morning clearing its throat.
First published in 'The Million-petalled Flower of Being Here', Bloodaxe Books, 2019.