Lines Written One Year Ago

It is a hell of a thing to watch someone you love slowly die.
To watch them dissolve before your eyes in the house that you share.
It is a sad, strange privilege.
There is an exaltation to it.
This is the edge of all we know, all we can know.
We spend so much time avoiding the edge, shrinking from it.
But I have been dragged here, and I will not shrink. I must not shrink.
The void is so close. Silent and vast.
It is reflected in her eyes, her yellowing upturned eyes that no longer fully close.
She drowses, pale and thin and full of everything that a life can hold.
It’s all still there, coiled up inside her, even now.
Where will it go?
What will remain?
She is leaving, slowly leaving me even as I watch
She is going
She goes
And I cannot point where.
Somehow it seems as though I should.

Image by Midjourney