Barbara: Persona Poem

                   Coping

“Your husband is dying.”

I cannot see it.  I can accept it.

I can function.  But when,

I think they’re lying

I am immobilized.

            To prepare myself for the end

            To start grieving, and then –

            False alarm.

            False hope.

Because as Death looms, imminent,

I am at peace.

But at its retreat, I grow rabid.

And this wickedness,

Weakness, suffocates me.

But I cannot watch him

Linger.

To return to the routine,

the tedium,

the unending parade of pills,

the gasping of the oxygen machine,

I shall go mad. 

I will.

Audio of Poem