*Makes Crazy Gesture With Finger Beside His Head*

All at once
I saw
for a fleeting
moment
That Flash of
your flaxen hair
in the lights of
trash can bonfires;
but I was mistaken.

It was only a drummer for the band
and he
had not
your countenance
nor ever
will anyone
else.

And somehow I knew
that you'd
lose your phone
that night
and it hurt and burned
like a bullet
remembering
that you
are
diseased.

Diseased and dying, through
no fault of your own
and I in my ignorance cannot see
the sores
and welts
and lesions
that make you
the way you
are.

So I forget
I treated you like an athlete
when you should
have clearly been on the bench, or
in the hospital.

When I heard
you had lost your phone
later,
and my
suspicions were
confirmed,
I knew
then, and only then,
that the alcohol
wasn't the only thing
making you forget.

Somehow you forgot,
through no fault of your own,
and I in my ignorance
raged against the dying mind
like I could change it, like
you might
suddenly be cured
by
 a
   verbal
slap
or
dis       jointed
kindness and strength,
a
              hug
here or a
                 shake there
could bring you back to the world of
the living.

Hubris is the fatal flaw of many men
and I too
succumbed to it: Thinking that I was
stronger than
Any disease!
especially
one that inhabited
another.

I have been the bearer of
both the lash
and the stroke,
and to stripe the back of
another
only to
see the blood
after the fact
makes me recoil
from myself
in horror.