Stay

I think I will get a ticket, that we will get a ticket. I think that I will take her there, her and the cancer she claims like an adopted child. I think of the three of us on a plane but nobodies even sellin tickets to over there anymore. I still work, she still wakes up before me, stays up after, way after, never goes to bed, never leaves it either. I could understand not being able to afford a trip to the hospital, not being able to get medicine, you know, health for the wealthy right, or at least second chances for the wealthy, anyway, it’s something else feeding your wife ramen, when she’s sick, but it’s not like she would keep down a twenty dollar steak either.

Cables out, TV, we never got TV, I couldn’t make it work, her dad came over tried too. We talk less but are together more. I come home and wash in the sink, everything, dishes, my face, her night shirt, our cat, everything. You don’t tell the woman you have failed that you hurt your back, you just stay in the chair and pretend to fall asleep in it. You don’t tell her your cold, that the hole in your shoes has put holes in all of your socks, all in the same place. You tell her the snow is beautiful, the sun is warm, you ask if she wants you to pull the curtain and get the window open, you ask her if she is ok, you know the answer, you listen to it, it’s always worse than you think it will be.

You don’t let her smoke inside, she just does and you don’t say no, you don’t do anything but love her for it, you think, you think you will smoke too so she feels less worse about it, about smoking inside, about not being able to get up, to get outside, to hide it, but you stole the cigarettes she smoking. You think, you hope she rations them out, enjoys them at least a little and maybe uses them to erase less, right, forget less? There is no walking away from the past. My memories, dreams, what ever they are, theres no leaven em behind. Whats gonna happen won’t go either, just keeps comin like a tiny reflecter on a long turn during a long night drive. She used to take them without me. I imagine her lost like she is now, smoking, any song playing, cool air, her beauty hidden from her but not from me, not even now.

“Go home and be with her.”

I think things will change. The new gods have returned. All those wrongs, and the ones I’ve done too, I see em like them needin to do a little more work on a Monday cuz of the weekend, right, the new gods, that’s all it could be to them right, a little more effort, catchin up on wrongs, setting things right, fixen our hearts well again, takin her cancer back, laying it back upon the wherever it came from, a mossy cradle, a cradle of stars, the thing come to kill her.

No one knows anything. For the best I can sit on the roof of the apartment and look east, though I might as well look west for how far they say they are from us. I try not to think about it like a prayer, like they are listening, waiting for the mustard seed in my brain that must be there by now. I don’t know why it’s gotta run out our love like that, lookin at her, bein with her like this, all the time, her hurtin, me doin nothing in gods damn hell about it, about anything.

Is it wrong if she goes quick or stays like a shirt wearing out while worn. When will she not be everything anymore. I don’t tell her that she should be dyin with more, with better. That someone should be there when she’s cryin and getting sick, that She should have something for the cold and the fever, the pain and the vacancy, that If not I then god and if not god then the new gods. I don’t tell her I wish there were treatments and comfort and understanding cuz what I want is her happy, what I want is her standing there lookin out from the laundry room, smiling at me, or layin there, awake before me, curled up like a new pea, warm, bright, smiling in all the cold the greatest angel, here, with me, forsaking the same heaven I cannot rush her to now for loving in vain weakness and need this everything given to me and now dying.

Stay with me. Stay with me.. in the cold where our smiles are stiffening like feet. In the soot dark and sweat dirty sheets. Stay and lay and dream with me and still awaken to this, to us. Stay through the hunger, through the things I could not steal or kill for or bring back honestly. Theres is no pride for a man. there is nothing but her leaving and me holding her with what she holds onto me with. Stay til you cant stay, until you can’t even go, and then, love…