Last Year: A Poem

A poem found in a notebook

Photo by Nicole Avagliano on Unsplash

Right from the start it showed symptoms
of unease, spotty days, depressed nights,
a certain lethargy that dragged the hours.

We tried simple remedies, home cures,
laughed at old wives’ tales
and kept looking over our shoulders.

It began to waste away, to faint
in over-warm rooms with skin
that was clammy to touch.

We insisted on a doctor; mulish,
it submitted to a long examination
and shrugged at our hopeful faces.

There was nothing that could subdue
its pain. We played the waiting game.
Easy to prescribe time when you’re not

counting it. Christmas was a beacon
that flickered and faded, the new year
rose, shaky and grey.
We stand in its haze, unheeded.

(I wrote this poem more than three years ago and recently found it in a notebook.)