In the morning after you have slept with someone, 

You see the holes from picture hangers on the wall,

The dust asleep on their skirting boards – 

And as they are slow to wake up, 

The gentleness between you is slow to wake as well.

You breathe asynchronous, ask for the time, 

Tell one another what you will do that day, 

And lying there you have never felt more warm,

And moving together you curl up somehow softer than before – 

Because last night you had all night left, 

But now that time has gone away. 

Soon you will have to get out of that bed, 

But before then you still have space left to linger, 

And you do not know once you get out of that bed 

How long until you next might lie there – 

At the least it won’t be for a day, 

At the most you won’t lie there ever again, 

So you lie a little longer as to mark it somehow. 

But then you get up, and looking back at the bed 

The wrinkled pillows show signs of living not there before – 

Where you had unfurled an eternity ago

And now you are not there anymore. 

But having been there you are always somehow still there, 

Even more than you are here right now.