Fairy Tale(For Scarlett)

I sit by your bedside watching your dying. Only Love nails me to this pain. I unable to escape your dying. I tell you Irish legends & Hans Christian Anderson as you become again (if only for a little while) the child you used to be once upon a time when wonder & delight were new as daylight. “Tell me Lir! ” “Tell me the Children of Lir! ” I tell of how they are turned into swans & the loneliness of eternity. I too knit nettles to break the spell throw the garment over your cancer’d body so you can return again to being the human I have known. This dying is cruel beyond belief. An insult to your life. I love you so much I would kill you if I could kill you but I...can’t. I want every breath of you not to be your last. You journey to your death dancing with your pain my little mermaid my little ballerina I guard your dying a Constant Tin Soldier as you become foam foam on the sea. Just a day ago sucking a sultana I held on the tip of my fingertip telling me to call your name. “I love living in your voice! ” “So nice...so nice! ” And I a blind Prince wandering now lost in the fairy tale of your Death. I close your eyes. kiss the last warmth of your lips. ******* Being Dragged Across The Carpet By The Cat - A Tanka You fall on the floor. Carefully I brush you up returned to your urn you sit upon the mantlepiece gazing at the setting sun.