and i see you smile

but i never know when

it will come back into this

house, again.

  you lay on your bed like a corpse rotting

the lights turned out but it’s barely six o’clock

the sun is still awake but you are hiding beneath

your fluttering eyelids behind the windswept curtains.

this evening you ask me to

make you rice and you cry when i tell you no,

when i say you gotta learn for yourself

you are curled into the blue covers and your

bleeding sobs fill the entire house when i sit at the

edge of your bed, you flinch at the touch of my

hand on your back.   Critical. Kidney. Liver. the doctors say

that you are critical right now as they inject medicine

into your forearms. we are in the hospital again.

this time it was different. this time i can’t see where

your eyes have gone. I watch you as you sleep.

peaceful and quiet. a child again with big blistering

eyes and rosy cheeks. this time they hook you up to a machine

with two IVs your arms are bruised from being poked

with countless needles. you are in the hospital.

Nausea wakes you in the early morning sends

you down the hall to the bathroom with shaking limbs. 

and i see you smile dont know when it will

come back. i watch you eat and wish you would keep

it down. i watch you and call you beautiful and you roll your eyes.

i try to comfort but i know my touch pains you to the bone.

i try to hug you but your arms won’t allow it.

  and i cry and i wonder how you do this.

i wonder how you can take the unfair weight of the struggling

the pain of living a nightmare on your shoulders. and i watch you cry.