Your pockets of time turn to large swaths of empty as the illness moves in and takes over your body. It will not name itself, will not disclose its intentions, just sits on your chest for days on end and tears you from your slow and steady build toward stability. He offers to bring you food, to make you laugh, to watch you sleep, and you don't know how to explain that your brief flirt with what it is to be human ended in collapsing bridges and boarded airports. It was too much work to get there once, how could I possibly do it again?
I sit in the open window, eating ramen and tapping out poetry, trawl my own words to find the key, to find the secret that unlocks a happiness I know I once carried. The words show up empty handed, show up without their usefulness in tow, I close the books and grasp at straws. The illness sits in your lungs like fire smoldering in the underbrush: quiet, insidious persistent. It's just that fear can be a little over-eager and misguided, says a Post-It on the wall, a gentle reminder from a kinder time. You finish another book, think I can do better.
Wonder if you really ever got back up and dusted yourself off,
or if everything before this was child's play.
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