Because even Atlas gets tired.
Dear Parkinson’s, While you pull wool over my sisters’ eyes, I see you for what you are, A menace, a degenerative disease, A slow and steady march towards a painful destination. They cannot see it or claim not to, The way his words are getting more slurred, The way he forgets simple things, The way he struggles to get off the couch,
Sliding off like a man free falling, Flailing to grab hold of something But coming up empty-handed.
Dear Parkinson’s, It was not enough that you stole my father’s body, Like a parasite, you grew inside him until You had infected all his limbs and muscles. That, Parkinson’s, would have been enough, But you are also devouring his mind, His memory now disappearing in puffs of smoke, A man who cried only at his father’s funeral, Who will now cry at the drop of a hat. You have carved out the man my father used to be, Like a Jack-o-lantern during Halloween, And inhabited him instead.
Dear Parkinson’s, I know you are here to stay, I see your toothbrush occupying space by the sink, I see your unpacked clothes filling the drawers of the dresser, I see your food wrappers appear in our trash And your fingerprint smudges on the fridge. I know you are here to stay, And no amount of bargaining, pleading, or sobbing will change it.
You eat his body and possibly linger inside us too, One day will you come to visit me or my sisters? One day will we become your new host? One day will we become a shell just like dad? One day will you call my body home too?
HVWP COMMONPLACE 23
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