Serious illness

In suffering serious illness, your boundaries transmogrify,

uncomfortable in fragile permeability.

Fear skitters down the hallways of your mind,

hides chuckling manically, in dark corners -

encased in crackling transparency.

Your breath shudders shallowly as you stare

at your pale limp hand upon the sheet.

Your eyes close and disjointed imaginings dance

their scenes under your lids.

Time passes slowly, almost in stupor,

as curtains waft in the breeze.

Pain marks the minutes and the hours.

Fever draws hot rank sweat -

nausea, shivering, clutching, retching

for days and days and days and days.

Intense suffering realigns your being, redefines you.

Visions of you in health, running along the beach,

wind behind you, fade into the reality:

a crouched shadow, desperately clinging to hope for a cure.

Depression mounts with reserves of positivity spent, and fear reigns.

Once finally well enough, you find the illness has shaped you -

in some ways stronger, in some ways weaker.

But the message is clear, and the lesson learnt:
Life is short, make and give whatever you can -
carpe diem.

© Jennifer Phillips (All rights reserved)

Sick bear © Jennifer Phillips