Somewhere between fever and farewell

Bright blurry lights buzz above me fading in and out

I can’t tell if the white curtain surrounding me is for privacy or for dying.

There is a distant rhythmic beaping and a flow of muffled voices.

Everything burns. My skin, my breath, my memory

–

All of it’s curling into smoke.

 

I think I’m leaving.

Not all at once.

More like unraveling.

The fever pulls me through corridors that don’t exist,

Rooms that breathe,

Hands that almost touch.

I reach for someone I invented

Just to feel like I mattered.

And still… no one has ever loved me.

 

Not really.

Not in the way poems promise,

Not in the way eyes soften

When they look across a room and know:

“It’s her.”

 

I wonder what if feels like

To be chosen

When no one’s watching.

To be held not out of pity,

But awe.

To be loved by someone

Who would weep to lose me.

 

In a couple years, Maybe more

My bones will grow cold

The hallucinations will fade

The room will stop speaking

But the world will not pause.

And the quiet love I never knew

 

Will rest with me.