The Night Shift

By Natalie Sorrell Charlesworth

I have crossed continents to hold
your hand tonight. Walked soles
ragged on dirt roads, rent palms
on wire fences. All this, to whisper 
mother-tongue platitudes into 
sweat-slick skin; to observe
the arrhythmic rise of ribs under
pressure; to empty bedpans.

Tomorrow there will be another
in my place, one who speaks 
with the tongue of your mouth.
I will be perfecting my Sunday 
morning bus-stop lean. Cheek
to perspex, scuffed scrubs slipping 
from the foreshortened seat,
braced on discounted crocs.

You, will forget I was ever there.
Save that sometimes, you will pray
in the cadence of a different
language, and you will be alive.

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Written Word ‘Heart’ poems