I hope when we leave this lapsing category of malaise
It is to move toward; “All better now” and “well”
And never look back ….
At those rags that became us
Chained to a monstrous reality
Foisted like gravity
An unnatural disaster, scattering months
As what you took for granted can mock
Even the most stalwert
**
Before we were thrown together 
You were sane and I was whole
Not the vomiting wretch you met
In the dim hallway of limbo
We held onto each other
As broken pieces seek comfort
In the sharp edges of others
Not misery loving company, as pleated savagry
Misunderstood by that exterior world named;
“Those who are well, as we are no longer”
**
It was always night and always day
No difference
No discernment
To starve on the circumfrance 
You understood
The sudden loss of everything
We wrote, as violet penned lovers
On pieces of ourselves
Every tear, every unfurnished gap
Showing where parts of our whole had
Turned to ashen facsimile
**
In our former world
We may never have
Shared a long drawn breath
And here, in a room without clocks
We assemble words like kindling
Speaking of forbidden things
The rest of the world seeks succor from
Sickness you see, is a social pariah
People flee, even family
And the world could have burnt down outside this hospital
With you and I clad in backless gowns
The ribboned IV, a sharp needle with scratched song
Our wet faces seeing only the glue of disease
Dancing like embers at the edge of pinkening day
Rolling into months, as illness will smother whatever you were before
You lost the bet ….
**
Longing to leave this new role with the urgent lust of addicts
Nosing bags of sugar, to reclaim health
Though it were a fabled prize
And maybe it is 
For those shod on soft shoes
Feeling every stone beneath
Something of trauma, acts as language
Only you, only I, understand
We’ll never be the same now
Whether we survived or died
Shifting mystery within, to a new state without
Everything changes, even the taste of day and close of night
A voice
A warning
Unwelcome insight
And you tell me
We are closer for sharing a preview of death
Than friends who laughed together for decades
For fear can make strange bed fellows
**
It is true
My friend found in darkness
Reflection of what we never say outloud
It is my wish we gather everything we have left
Set fire to the pyre
Douse argument
Walk right through
Finding out there is a bridge
Even when you almost gave up
There are hands reaching 
For whatever is left after the fall
Hope
Pitches a tent in the parking lot and waits however long
And it is that 
Or maybe nothing more than will
A will to reclaim
That sets us trying again and again
With the forge of desire
Silver in a cloudless sky