Death

Sometime I think that death surrounds me
Black tendrils snake from my soul and ensnare love ones
Coiling around their faces and behind their eyes
Filling them with a blackness that cannot be undone.

Helpless I struggle against the helplessness
But what use is there in fighting abstract illness?
I am not the corruption of your soul my love
Perhaps I  have grown to love the nameless.

I've tasted the bitterness before
Felt the snake of shame across my skin
The clocks stop and you live in the gasp
The timeless wait for you to breathe in.

I have witnessed the consumption of joy
The sapping of lifelessness I myself so fear
And though it swirls and boils around me
It cowers away and will not draw near.

I cannot defeat it for you, there is no enemy here
Just a familiar sickness in the moment before grief is due
I have often thought that death surrounds me
It has followed me all my life, and I have found it again, with you.