It is hot
and it is oppressive and
her hurt

needs bathing.
What can he do that he hasn’t
already?

He can take
the salt to the stairs, he
tells her –

ascending being
all in the effort to care enough
if she does.

There were times
when he carried, both piggyback
and cradled,

but those
nightmares have been subsumed by a
long and

slowed reality.
Are wounded and wound an equivalence?
She is

wound round
this cycle of pain without a balm other
than their trying.