I knew you were there alone, sitting in the darkness of your house,

sitting next to your enormous patio window shaded with the

excuse that it costs too much to run the AC. Sitting. Withering

inside before it showed on your flaking skin. You vomited

blood that night on the saltillo tile, careful not to

smear any on your expensive camel hair couch.

I knew you crawled to the toilet bowl alone. You told me

your hair fell in thick clumps but you didn’t have to tell me.

I saw the autumn colored wig you wore soon after, an awful

comparison to the glory of angelic blond curls that haloed

your head. I used to believe you were an angel fallen from

heaven just to be with me when I needed you most. You

didn’t have to tell me and I didn’t want to know

and I was careful not to tell you how my insides tore

apart more painful than yours trying to get rid of all those

chemicals they’d drain inside your veins.

Month after month.

My brain was stopped by my cracked tongue when

we spoke. Your shriveled ears blocked my cries in

that wilderness of gloves and gowns, stainless steel

poles and silastic tubes. Is it too late to tell

you I was always there when I wasn’t

always there?

Close to the end, years of watching you suffer, you

sat alone in a wheelchair, straight spine bowed. Your

cement blue eyes turned to me oh, so dull they

were now. “What would you recommend I do?” I could

feel my heart congeal.

“If I tell you, will you do it?”

Inside this silence pours a lifetime of laughter and pain.

Our hooks of love hemorrhaged at the slightest tug.

“Probably not.”

“Then what should I say?”

Oh. My dear, dear heart. I never wanted to be

your doctor. Only your friend and yet I still wonder, was

that ever—

enough?