My friend wears his coat like a skin
peeled from a molting elk.
Patches cover holes in the elbows
made by leaning against brick walls to catch his breath
or falling on broken glass.

His pockets had once been cornucopias milk-toothed children
drowned in.
Candies poured out in cascades of foil, wax paper
and plastic wrap.

Hands, lightly powdered with icing sugar
perfumed the air around him with
the scent of caramel.

Suffused with thews refused even Midas,
everything he touched turned to chocolate, honey and smiles…
but now,
vacant of liquorice, lint,
money, mints,
his pocket linings contain less air
than shredded banderoles
flapping on abandoned cannon scarred battlefields.

Those once confectionary hands
swapped candy canes for walking sticks.

He trudges along the sidewalk
through quicksand thick crowds
on legs more numb than a spree killer,
at the pace of a wounded man
fighting a snowstorm conjured just for him.

This illness,
called ‘old friend’ in mixed company
(he smokes his weight in cannabis)
hangs on him like a drunken boatswain
carried aboard after shore leave
by the only mate holding his liquor.

This ‘old friend’
demyelinates
desecrates nerve tissue
reduces neural pathways to shriveled river beds
leaving dead end streets strewn
with discarded bundles of axons.

My friend wears his skin the same way a coat hanger wears a bathrobe.
It dangles on threadbare shoulders like defeat,
a race worn down
by centuries under the lash.

Through it all he smiles,
a good sport
fighting through sludge
day after day after day,
dragging one good foot
ahead of the other
before it shrinks away.