I sometimes wonder what it is that's killing us, and then I remember that you have been, and remain, unwell.
I told you earlier that the recollection of your condition sometimes causes me surprise - to look at you, nobody would ever know that you ailed a thing.
In my clumsiness, I fail to make enough allowances for your other self, the one which squeezes you until you wince. The one which shunts you intermittently over the threshold of darkness.
When I got back into the house tonight, you were silent, and nothing I could do would stir you. Yet you flew forever to get here, back to my ordinariness.
I try to give myself enough margin for error, but my most conservative guesses are hopelessly optimistic. Strained words regarding whether or not every man would find you attractive. I can speak only for myself, love. The evening poisoned.
What is it that's killing us? Your other self is akin to a lover - it seeps into the gaps between your love and mine, and corrodes both. The bluefish and the redfish and the something-else fish. The darkfish.
What a weight you carry, the weight of being sick. What a hopeless excuse of a partner that cannot lift it even a millimetre, watching hopelessly as you are ravaged again - making love to a butcher, with the face of a million different types of pain.
The sickness makes you no less beautiful. I always see your face floating cloud-like on my idle working-day dreams. No less beautiful, but altered - and what alters you changes me alike. Darling, we need a new paradigm - one where I am more aware of events unfolding around us, and one where every day is a short step towards your eventual well-being (it will come) and not this difficult terrain which threatens the very existence of our synthesis.
