Her Last Night at Home

Her last night at home

she phoned, out of breath.

I was still half asleep

when she said, "There's a bird,

or a bat, loose in the house.

Please can you come home now?"

From outside I could see

the light in every window.

She met me at the door.

"It's behind the curtain

in the dining room, I think.

Something flew down the stairs."

She handed me a tennis racket,

and sat exhausted, thin, pale.

I looked everywhere: the cellar,

upstairs, in every window.

Nothing was behind the curtain

except the night, black,

full of morphine, and her house

flooded with all its lights,

reflecting back in the glass,

rooms unfolding one after another:

a long corridor to an empty kitchen.