I look at it with different eyes now,
and see it for what it truly is.
A dying place.

To leave ones house, ones home,
leave a life out there in the living place,
never to return.
To squeeze out a space and settle into dying.

There's the constant stench of stale ***** and constipated excrement.
The unconscious moans of the unfortunate discarded souls,
those “I don't know what else to do with him” bundles of flesh
that lay fetal on their last beds.

The aged, fully cognizant eyes,
staring at too loud plasma screens,
incapable of fulfilling their dreams.
Locked in a body
too decrepit to live,
too alive to die.

Do I say hello? Or rudely say “how are you today?”
I walk the halls and feel so out of place
for I..... can leave,
I can ride my bike with the wind on my face,
I can live free in my living place.
They glance at me as I walk by as if to say,
your day will come,
my dying space here in this dying place
will be yours someday.

I no longer hear the moans now,
they have melded with the disinfectant,
Wheel of Fortune, chicken *** pie,
squeaking wheelchairs in the hall.
I have become a member of this dying place,
I am the free one from the living place,
the one that visits his 97 year old Mother
with the broken hip.....

There are few words to describe how I feel about the love of my life,
but I hope that this will.

"I sit beside a nurse
The love of my life
And God willing one day
She will be my wife.
I watch her get ready
Her makeup and hair.
And smile as she goes
Where only few dare.
She walks beside the timid,
The mild and meek
She is the strength
When they are the weak.
She battles the sickness
The lows and the highs.
She is the savior of so many lives.
She is my angel
My princess, my queen.
My nurse is the maker of so many dreams."

-Brian Patrick O'Connor SR.- 2016

When you got home in the early morning hours
You said that you were with someone
I was not mad

When you told me how you met them
You had the night of your life
I was not mad

When you told me that you tried to leave their room
You were begged not to go
I was not mad

When you told me you felt so connected to them
You were their everything
I was not mad

When you told me how you placed your hands on their chest
You told me of the breaths you shared
I was not mad

When you fell into my arms, cried and told me
You had barely saved their life
I was so proud

-For all who have sacrificed for the well being of the unknowns-

-Brian Patrick O'Connor SR.- 2016