You wouldn’t think to look twice: no high fence
crowned with broken glass, no security guard
heavy with boredom and a lanyard of keys.
Having composed a list the Institute
might consider: how far moonlight extends
into a fox den or the influence
of the drone from competitive grieving
on the inner ear, I entered the drive.
No retina scanner or voice recognition
technology at the door. I was not shadowed
by a suit with an earpiece
coiled discreetly into place.
No one paused mid-conversation as I passed.
In a corner, a photocopier was dispensing
thin repetitions of light
and a man was leaning over a microscope
his eye to the portal of another world.
Enquiry is haunted with inference, he said
without looking up. The heart, for example.
Like the collective weight of sunlight that falls
upon the earth, our hurt can be measured.
I had never spoken of how, on our last
night together, she had held my hands
looking down as though trying, through
sheer concentration, to revive them
and was now resigned to letting them go.
In the morning, as she drove away
a bird clipped the side mirror
causing her to slow, glance back
then accelerate around a corner.
When I told the man her name
means ‘breakwater’ in Welsh, he whispered
as if quoting from a psalm or spell:
Consider, then consign to memory
the call and distribution of the monogamous swift.

Anthony Lawrence