She’s taken a good, hard look at the state

of our relationship. She knows it’s not

for her. The worst thing is, she doesn’t tell

me this straight up or even to my face. No.

She books us appointments with specialists

in strip-lit rooms. They peer at us over paper

masks with eyes whose kindness I can’t bear.

They speak of our marriage in images:

a pint of milk that’s on the turn, an egg

whose yolk is punctured, leaking through

the rest, a tree whose one, rotten root

is poisoning the leaves. I try to understand

how much of us is sick. I want to know

what they can do to put us right. She,

whose soft shape I have lain with every night,

who’s roamed with me in rooky woods, round

rocky heads. She, who’s witnessed the rain

pattering on the reedbed, the cut-glass chitter

of long-tailed tits, the woodpecker rehearsing

her single, high syllable. How have we become

this bitter pill whose name I can’t pronounce?

Soon, she’ll sleep in a bed that isn’t mine.

That’s why, these nights, we perform our trial

separations. She, buried in blankets, eyelids

flickering fast. Me, up there on, no — wait —

through the ceiling, attic, roof. I’m flying, crying,

looking down. Too soon, I whisper to her warm

and sleeping form. Not yet. Too soon. Too soon.