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MS from Downstairs

Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2011 12:07 pm
by eolon
Hello:

As a new poster, I wanted to post a poem I wrote recently about my wife and her struggle with MS.

You need not reply or comment to this, but just writing it made me feel better. Thank you, friends, and

Best Regards,

e

.::.


MS from Downstairs

Your Disease holds your hand as a lover
He whispers "stay with me"
and you say your marriage is to your husband
and for thirty years

He is intractable; "just one night, you could move some things over";
"You and I are One; we are meant to be together."
"My Husband!", you lament, perhaps you are crying, perhaps not"
Your Disease is succinct: "He will get over it, he can't love you like I do"

And one day, he is all you think of
from the morning shower with your fingertips tingling
the the nightly ritual of rumpled bedclothes and hot pain in your hips.

You are discrete,
to few female friends you confide
"Don't tell anyone"

Your husband hovers around you and your growing annoyance
"Perhaps we should sleep in separate beds," you say
"that way I won't awaken you when I come to bed at odd hours."

You could ask your husband to help with the injections
or to push you in the wheelchair, but that is your Disease's hand
that guides yours. Your husband must never know.

And the man you married moves the stickpile to the other side
of the yard. He plans vaguely to retire to a ranch house and
have a couple of dogs. Until you met, he assumed he would never
share his live with anyone.

Now he shares it with you and a stranger.

(c) 2011 eolon