your dearest fears.
Those that, once on a time, in
the country of the healthy, you
would have dismissed with a smile
turning to your latest love.
Yet, like an animal that follows you
home, they wheedled their way
into your sick affection.
Now, casting their speckled
skin they are revealed
for what they are – loathsome,
predatory, implacable - the
many faces of hurt.
Patient and passive, our
lives in parenthesis, we wait
for someone to call our name.
Though we sit side by
side, we are not companions, each
languishes in their own solitude,
our eyes do not meet.
No one’s file of words bears
exactly the same judgment, illness
is as distinctive as a laugh.
We shall return here like sad
comets every three months, until
some vagary of gravity spins
us off, out, onto a path for which
there is no return.Simon Peter Iredale
Copyright: Simon Peter Iredale
