I don't really know why. It's not like I'm going to become a famous poet or anything. But they are important to me. I guess that's enough.
The Dying
The decade-long
vow of silence is over.
Blinding flash
Sudden
Irreversible
the floodgates burst wide.
My tin-cup bailing
can never return
the water-secrets to their
placid bed.
Still waters run deep.
Shocked, they say,
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I wish I had known."
"Nobody told me he was sick."
Gasping for air,
I am a fish out of water in this new world of
THEM KNOWING.
my secret
my life
my heart
spilled all over the kitchen
floor.
I try to mop up the past
wring the drops into
my memory-bucket.
The drops you wipe are
Mine.
Leave them alone.
I
will clean up the mess
and the vomit
and the tears.
And I will drink from his
cup
Unafraid.
I will go to the doctor,
Praying, heart weeping,
Smiling,
"You'll be fine. I'm sure
it's nothing."
You want the shiny, pretty floor
waxed and picture
perfect.
I
stripped the wax, sanded
the wood, gave the meds,
pressed the button
beep beep
morphine more morphine.
Your floor, checkered, shining
is only dirtied by the muddy
foot-printed secrets you think you see.
My floor caved in,
my foot broke through
the dry-rot of death
my heart caught the
splinters.
I like the splinters. They hurt.
The piercing is the only thing that
makes me feel
Alive
but dead
all at once.
You go on, squirting the wax
on the floor,
it looks prettier that way,
even with the great big
Gaping hole
in the middle.
I hate the smell of your
Cover-up.
I want the smell of him even
in his death-bed, the
stillness of the night,
his frightened eyes shining in the
dark
as I lay my head beside his.
I promised never to leave,
but I did. I slept, showered, changed clothes...
I should have kept my
Promise.
I should have touched him
every minute of
every day of
those tens years or at least of
those last 24 days.
But my secret is out.
I want it back, clutched to me tightly
like the memory of his fingers tugging mine
like the picture of his sweet face
like those last breaths
like seeing him clutch the necklace Scott sent him
like all the books, articles I read to find "The Cure"
like the screams I never screamed
the tears I never shed
the fear I never spoke
the grief I can't let go.
You think it's shocking to hold this secret
so long.
I should have called, asked for
help.
You ask me to give up my only comfort these days -
I kept the secret
showed the shiny, clean floor
You wanted always to see
You want some romantic painting of what "it" was like
to know and to see this ravishment before my very eyes.
It was never a picture, or pretty or
romantic.
A young man dead.
Twenty-four days. From laughing, smiling
entertaining, scared to
bed-ridden, drugged, suffering
anxious, dying.
Twenty-four days to hope and pray.
Where was God?
Where were you? You're so smug.
"I would have come if I'd known."
Where the hell were you?
Do you need death to come?
I earned the dying because I was there
in the LIFE.
It was ugly and beautiful and sad and happy and all that humanity
should be.
And for all that, I got the privilege of watching him
Die.
You can't have that.
No matter what you say to me
or think of my secrets,
the real secret was love.
Enough to stay till the
End
and through the middle
and the hospital, the sickness, the anger, the fear, the joy, the giving up, the loss of dreams, the settling for reality, the drinking, the abandonment, the boyfriends, the pets, the search for approval, the wishing, the tears unshed, the unspoken knowledge, the furtive glances, the damage control, the deterioration of everything...
You think you know my secrets,
But I can see
you know nothing about me
at all.
c. Jean A. Miller 6/2/97
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