I’m meant to be dead,
meant to have drowned in my own mucus
more than two decades ago.

Chest infections,
pneumonia,
liver failure,
respiratory failure,
tumours…
This is my resume,
my physiological portfolio.

And I’m stuck in between
hope and desire.
I hope for a bit of pity,
for someone to pet me,
for the basest of human connection.
This can happen now or tomorrow,
can happen at all.
Desire? I desire all.
I desire true love
and true passion
and true adoration above inspiration.

But I’m meant to be dead.

True things take time,
and I am disadvantaged by image too.
I do not qualify for lust, let alone love.
Have you ever tried going on a date
without physical possibility?
Well, no possibility means no result.
No possibility means no chance.
And even if there were chance,
if some mad god smiled on me,
it’s only one more chest infection,
only one probable heart attack,
only one slip of my control by my eroding hand,
only one step before fate is realised.

Happy endings are made for few,
and I am on the farthest end from there.
Death is the friend I have been taught to know,
and death is the friend forever at my side.

© Blake Leitch May 9, 2016