Fluid.
Limbs flooded,
lungs immersed,
skin engorged-
you chase it off.
Pill
after pill.
Nights.
Twilight wheezes
upon three pillows.
Four.
Five.
Bare
are your breaths
as you gasp,
fight-
hunger unquenched.
Stairs
unconquerable,
indomitable,
fatigue intractable.
Slowly you ascend.
Still
you conquer,
embrace
love,
life,
strength.
Your heart full.
Your dilated cardiomyopathy.
Tendons, vessels, muscle, bone-
little more than its sum, alone.
Without life, alone.
A heart upon your fingers,
fibers smooth, firmness lingers.
A pump sleeps, alone.
Nerves, severed and denuded,
shimmering, taut, function diluted.
Pain without feeling, alone.
A lung, delicate sponge, blackened,
absorbs an essence, greyed, maddened.
Vacant sacs, stale breaths, alone.
The cerebrum, split, its valleys and mounds,
embodies a soul, full, without bounds.
My lifeless being is nothing alone.
Rivulets of sorrow meandering
down tear-stained skin.
“Keep her comfortable
until it’s time.”
Simple words-
echoes
of eternal reminder within.
You rise.
Guiding her
through the threshold
into the chill,
shudders
of realization emerge.
You survey
the molting trees,
their arid leaves
embellishing her hair
like fragments of
woven rhinestones.
As if they weep for her.
As if even the ambiances
of ages past are beseeching
her not to leave.
Soon arrives the Foehn,
holding you within
its warm embrace.
Its breaths,
whispering lines of truth,
sculpt a bittersweet tune
as they herald
the evening’s arrival.
You understand.
Cloaked
by lyrics of singing ivy,
her expression calms,
your fears dissolve.
Consoled by a draft possessive,
you cradle her
through the darkness
and follow her
toward the seraph’s call
into the fold of
midnight slumber.
•
![What Is Enough? [a poem]](https://i0.wp.com/phoebemd.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/5383362.jpg?fit=941%2C588&ssl=1&resize=40%2C40){kind=small}
