I wouldn’t have read this poem if I hadn’t been looking for references to illness in literature to make a melding between bookblog and toosicktobookblog.
Reading this poem that Adrienne Rich wrote over a three year period I was struck by the desolate impotence (Rich would probably hate that word) she felt
losing a friend who she loved her whole life yet never actually told.

“Most of our love took the form of mute loyalty”

How many times in my short span have I thought of the perfect thing to say, moments, hours, even years later?
Rich seems to use this cathartic poem to come to terms with what could/should have been.

“Don’t accept”
“Don’t give in”
“But would I be meaning your brave,
irreproachable life, you dean of women, or
your unfair, unfashionable, unforgivable
women’s death?”

There’s more, enough more to see that pain of loss doesn’t fade.
You just realize the depths of that pain and come to terms, an uneasy truce.
Living with that pain, truly living, that is the gift of life that comes from understanding death.
If we weren’t slated to end, well, wouldn’t the journey be pointless?

(ok, it’s a bit dark for a fill-in post while Stefanie is sick but i am what i am)
“Cluck” “Cluck” quoth the Bookman