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Pushed Into The Dark You taught me the day comes when, gorged with your own life, you can't go further. At the window, far from what you want, knowing you've built on a fault, a false premise. In prisons the door ahead won't open until the one behind is locked. This is how they move men. Even then, we don't want to go through. I looked from your room at Mass General to the city you loved, out to J's Deli in the old market, to the Italian pool hall where they serve cannoli at wrought iron tables. The only experience unchanged by recollection is horror. Before your illness I admired qualities, thinking this was love, thinking deference was humility. Time presses down and we panic, become inventive. The sky presses down on a field until it bursts into the distorted shapes of vegetables. No husband, no family, your pace was frenetic, the city yours. We learned to love each other's weaknesses, though this isn't love, but tenderness. When I came to the hospital I found another friend waiting by your bed, eating chocolate bars for supper, crying. When body or spirit is inconsolable, one tries to comfort the other. We forget they are seperate, insoluble. There is mystery in how we love, but not in why. Like forgiveness, love is practical. From your window we looked out at the flickering city. You wanted to put your finger on every point of light, push it into darkness. As if my body and not yours were the abandoned one. Drunk with violation, I do not defer. ..to go back |
