There is no poetry here.
No beauty transcending cruelty.
No reassurance to offer nor metaphor to distill.
Just the harsh, relentless fact
that her body remained years
(too many years)
after her soul departed.
A corporeal shell,
lying in sterile bed:
hollowed, howling, haunted.
Ragged, roughened, ravaged.
Unrecognizing, unrecognizable.
This
is
all.
These pitiful words,
this testament to
intolerable suffering
against which
she was helpless.
This is
all I have,
so tiny that infinite amounts
(nothing)
fit in the palm of my hand,
open or closed,
it does not matter.
Not to her.
Not to this suffering
which affixed itself
to this now-gone woman
who saved me
more than once.
(cc) Karen G. Johnston
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