No Words

She was with me up until
What was it?
The 37th or 44th visit.
A smile.
A word. Or two.
Time to pee.

Fluorescent lights
Smiling laughing nurses.
Good-hearted.
A few dim with their own thoughts.
But carefully not carrying anyone else’s.

The best built machines were in rooms by themselves.
Quiet.

Attendants smoked outside
and dark-faced figures carrying
lifeless flowers hurried by,
practiced words trailing behind them.

I am in the wrong wing.
A woman escapes her straps,
her red hair and speech wild.
Her body no use anymore
but to get out of.
She is gently tied to a chair and talks to
me as I go by - explaining her plans.

This floor smells of the Wait.
Other wives, grandmothers, mothers talk in front of sadly
hanging televisions each with many important words.
Their diapers are a final ridicule for
a lifetime of great earned knowledge.

Where are the men?

I am walking down hallway after hallway.
Color coded floors lead me past you
I am sure and past you once more.
I need to ask at the desks again
and again, I am lost.

You have been moved
and you can’t tell me.

There were many words I had needed 
to know.
Important terms.
Stage four.
Metastasis. 
Early on- alopecia. 

What do I do with them now?

I find the room. You.
I am lost in the 
untethered, frayed end of explanation.
And terms. 

And you are unmoored,
waiting. Patient.
Drifting.

At the end we both, finally,
share no words.

Like in our beginning
when no words
was love.

deathlovefree verse

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