Abide with me......

I am spent.

Frittered like gold coins emptied across the gambler's table....
even the gold dust from the creases of the chamois leather purse
is clawed out by my desperate fingers.

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He is gone.

My cheek is imprinted with the waffle weave of the hospital blanket
where I have lain prone across the space he used to occupy.
I lie prone, paralysed, pathos personified in the chair beside the bed that held him captive.......
sucked him dry as a withered husk
in spite of needles, drips, pipes in, pipes draining out...........

He is gone.

Bone sucking, marrow draining raw pain had him on a rack of torture.

He is gone and there is hardly a blip in the life of the ward.
The rattle of a hospital trolley with that obligatory loose clattering wheel fills my senses until I pass out, exhausted by gnawing emotions.

I feel a touch on my wet cheek
The tuck of my hair behind my ear,
So achingly familiar
Surely a memory come to life through desperate longing.

A narrow wedding band of gold rims the horizon, promising a brand new day

I refuse to be encouraged
and roll my head away....

And yet in the grey raggy whimsy ashes of my unstructured future
stirs a barely alive coal into the barest flicker.

With my eyes tight shut I ask its name.
and my God answers on the breeze,
"my name.......my purpose is

HOPE."