You held your secrets close, as gently
as they would allow, as if they, too, were
wounded things, in need of your full and constant
in your cool, anemic room kept you both safe.
So much we did not and could not know,
so much you kept even from yourself.
You longed most for respite from this life,
its continual demands, its pettiness and pretense,
the futility you saw in its endless disguises.
You wanted to step outside of it all, time itself
racing past the window glass, frame by crooked frame.
What a shock, then, when it found you unaware.
What a shock when the pills swallowed you.
I still don't understand the simplest things
in this life -- like how to love and be loved without
fear, or how to explain to others that you were
never the measure of your illness alone.
I still don't know if the world, as you might
have said, is so bitter that we must wash it down
with something strong, or so very sweet
and wonderous that we must raise our glasses
again and again. You tell me. You tell me.
