It Is An Abhorrent Thing (rev)

 

It is an abhorrent thing – this incarceration of
your vulnerability, profoundly cruel in the way
you were beaten to your knees, blithely unaware
it was a losing battle for health and wellbeing.
It was dreadful to witness your vigour evaporate,
sapped by a merciless agent of discontinuity, sold
into the slavery of sickness that surreptitiously
debilitates the will from within.

I am shocked, too, at my smallness in the face of
it, cowed by an enormity beyond which threatens
as one the core of our being. And seeing you pale
and traumatised in a hospital bed, whispering in a
tiny, distant voice, fire in your eyes a flicker where
it blazed before, I am unashamedly terrified.

And yet you inspire me with your selflessness; ill
as you sorely are you still strive to quell my ragged
sense of right and wrong, ease my devastation. But
I can think clearly, I should be abed in the hospital
ward instead of you. I should be your faithful shield,
gallantly guarding you against the depredations of
pain and uncertainty. Truly, I should be suffering
there instead of you.

As it is I fear melancholy of an empty house, the
echoes of effervescent lives we lived before this
cursed disease arrived to blight our happiness. As
it is I fear every fragile moment, hope for reprieve,
fear for my hope and care for you such my
aching heart should gladly burst.
©May, 2005, I.D. Carswell