A Purple Place for Dying


Wraiths must have danced,
For her eyes were wild, darting,
Starring wide-eyed, hysteric,
As if every monster conceived,
And not yet imagined,
Taunted and teased - demonized and polished
Their fangs just for her.
Something certainly horrified her.
Something forced her eyes
So ungodly large and filled with terror.

No one could reach into this world.
I wondered what words and language
Must have sounded like
For it to be so completely ineffectual.
Helpless I watched
My heart aching, tearing for her,
Wanting desperately to soothe
And quiet her demons and fears.

The nurses came
They went...

Quiet now,
Less agitated, turned resituated.
Off of the nerves of the tumor perhaps.
Yet the eyes still move in their demonic REM.
Frantic,
As if chasing a snitch in the quidditch match
Played for Gryffindor's very soul.
Fingers waxy now,
And yet somehow I know
That she knows I am there.
Yet I whisper it, a mantra "I'm here.
I'm here", and I'm sorry's.
And I whisper my anguished wish
To somehow do more than I can.
I hold her mottled hands and I whisper,
"I love you."

A nurse comes.
She goes...

It is dusk, cold, dry.
The air conditioning hums,
But I still can sense the furnace outside.
Eyes half open, lips cracked,
The sun's grasp fading from the day,
A yellow rose pulling from the sky.
Soon,
Lilac, lavender...
Her chest so moist, rales rattling,
Rhonchi gurgling,
Fingers pulling at the air,
The light nearly gone.
It is a purple place for dying,
A violet breath of lost light,
As I rise to get a swab to moisten her lips.
I looked away for only those nine or ten moments.
I looked back
I reached,
I wailed. She was gone.
"Just like you!", I laughed aloud. "Always so vain"
I smiled through my falling tears.
You had to wait 'til I looked away.