What Was Unsaid (Poetry)

For all those years
we had for the most part
been able to talk about anything —
nothing much taboo between old friends.

But suddenly illness changed all that —
I no longer knew what to say
or how to behave around you any more.
I sensed some basic rule had changed —
and I should have asked straight off —
what do I do now?
Instead I mostly stayed away.

After all you had so many people close —
a large and caring family
to fuss and fret over you —
I knew they would do all the could
to keep you with them
as long as possible —
had everything covered — all your needs —
and I would only feel in the way.

That let me off the hook —
or so I thought —
convinced that in your place
I wouldn’t want visitors to see me
reduced to some poor wreck
of who I used to be.

Truth was I wasn’t brave enough to risk
the shock of it.
Imagination dwelt too often on the vision
and the strain of trying not to show...
what exactly?
I know now it was fear —
that small dark word that bunches hard
and flowers like a weed drawn up through cracks
it smells of sorrow
yellows with its guilt.

I guessed you must be suffering
and prayed for a release — the end
for you — and me —
mercy for us both.

It is a coward’s memory that recalls
the last time that I saw you —
wheelchaired in your frailness
but I blot the image out
with another —
and console myself believing
you surely would prefer
I think of you as laughing — vibrant — whole
and you’re in my mind so often these long days
and still my friend
from childhood’s all-forgiving dream —
we talk in echoes
live again what’s past.