It’s something
Nothing
Can prepare you for.
No amount of reading
Or schooling
Can brace you for the crushing blow
That comes when someone you love and admire
Slips from your grasp
Like a trickle of water from
A once mighty stream.
There is nothing more painful
Than seeing a man you looked up to
Who gave you the world on a silver spoon
Deteriorate
Until all that is left is the mind of a helpless child—
One that can barely feed himself
Who tries to put both feet through the same pants leg
And who mumbles something
Only to repeat it seconds later
While swearing up and down that this is the first time.
The mind is fragile
Like glass
But when it is fogged and cracked
Things become
Fuzzy.
It terrifies me
How the mind can slip from being
Perfectly alright,
Albeit a bit stubborn,
To changed completely
To where
Your face isn’t recognized
And where
Simple tasks
Become impossible.
I know I had days
When “I hate you!”
Fell from my lips
Or where I wished
He would just
Disappear.
But today?
Oh today
I would give anything to have him back
To have him look at me with a sparkle in his eyes
Instead of that vacant stare
That screams that the lights are out.
Tonight
Was the hardest dinner of my life.