I am selfish not selfless
They say to me, "You are such a good friend... spending so much time taking care of Kel."
They don't know how jealously I guard our time together.
I lie here next to you, in our shared bed under the eaves of Moonshadow. Keauka Lake glitters below us in the late August sun. Turning leaves--bright spots of crimson and gold--warn of winter's coming.
I would keep each dear breath from your sleeping lips for myself. I fear missing even one. They are finite, like you.
Your pain hunches you over. You struggle to rise from the bed, exhausted before the day has even begun. No sleep found you last night. My sweet friend, how I wish I could take this cancer from you.
You sit, shaking, as I remove the soaked bandages and bathe your weeping sores. "Your skin looks so much better today," I say, hoping that it's true.
We pad and cover your scar--a battle-badge--hard-fought healing half a decade ago. We were so naive then. We didn't understand what triple-negative neoplastic meant--that every cell already carried your death within it.
Now, you and your docs play a macabre game of whack-a-mole, irradiating your scapula, brain, lung, lymph node, and liver. Your right arm is so swollen with lymph that you cannot move your fingers. Yet you fight on.
Yesterday, we laughed as I cut your unruly curls. I practiced with the clippers far less sucessfully on myself...and was glad of it when your laughter filled the room. I washed your hair at the kitchen sink and we giggled like children when I shot us both with the spray wand.
40 years ago, we met, freshmen matched by rudimentary punch-card computer programs. If only the AIs of 2024 were half so prescient.
My best friend, my soulmate, my sweet, loving Poo-Cat. How will I live without you?