Last Orders 1971 Poem by Terry Collett

All the others
have gone to bed,
dribbled off
one by one.

Yiska and I sit
in the lounge,
smoking,
watching the night
sky darken.

The nurse turned off
the TV sometime ago,
looked at us,
but said nothing.

The night nurse
sits in her small office,
we can hear her
turn over pages
of the reports of the day.

Yiska exhales a line
of grey smoke outwards:
it unfolds as it goes,
I do likewise,
the two lines of smoke
embrace,
then disappear.

The wrist of the hand
that holds the cigarette
on her right
has a healing scar
where she slit it
a while back,
her left wrist
is bandaged
where she tried again.

She sits crossed legged,
her pale pink dress
riding high up her thigh,
catches my eye.

Wish she'd fall asleep,
the nurse,
Yiska says,
looking at me,
we could try again
in the ECT room.

Bet its locked
this time,
I say,
remembering how
we nearly did
the other night,
out of the nurse's sight,
nearly found us,
close thing.

We stub out
the cigarette ends
in the glass ashtray.

She lies back
on the black couch,
laying her head
on the patterned pillow.

I lay with her,
kissing her lips,
her body touching mine.

You two should be
in bed by now,
the nurse says,
standing by the door,
arms folded.

We wish were too,
Yiska says.

We get up
and walk each
to our own dormitory;
she blows a kiss,
I grab from the air,
smile and don't miss.