MS from Downstairs

Disease holds your hand as a lover

He whispers "stay with me"

And you say your marriage is to your husband

And for thirty years

He is intractable;  "You could move some things over";

"You and I are One; we are meant to be together."

"My Husband!", you lament, perhaps you are crying, perhaps not"

Your Disease is succinct: "He can't love you like I do"

And one day, he is all you think of

From the morning shower with your fingertips tingling

To the nightly ritual of rumpled bed and hot pain in your hips.

You are discrete,

To few female friends you confide

"Don't tell anyone"

Your husband hovers around you and your growing annoyance

"Perhaps we should sleep in separate beds," you say

"That way I won't awaken you when I come to bed at odd hours."

You could ask your husband to help with the injections

Or to push you in the wheelchair, but that is your Disease's hand

That guides yours.  Your husband must never know. 

And the man you married moves the stick pile to the other side of the yard.  He plans vaguely to retire to a ranch house and Have a couple of dogs. Until you met, he assumed he would never

Share his life with anyone. 

Now he shares it with you and a stranger.

©2017 eolon