You're the one who understood. I've watched you,
wondered who you are since boyhood:
forty years together, maybe more.
No glass protects you
in the flaking gold gray frame that is your home.
You sit there angled to the right -
a high-backed wicker chair,
stare left, preoccupied or catatonic.
Fine flat hair, thick nose, full lips, dark clothing.
Your right hand's on your bosom, on your heart.
Fingers hold a long-stemmed thorny rose,
not passionate, not pure,
forever orange like an autumn leaf stuck fast.

I've taken you from storage, you're unpacked.
Old companion, melancholy icon:
I meet your painted gaze, dusk falls across my eyes.
I see you and remember decades of depression -:
my bouncing feet, my anxious fear that bubbled gut to throat,
overriding sleep, the search for exits everywhere,
my only hope some terrifying angel
would steal me in the night.

Now my mind sways green.
Serotonin, norepinephrine, dopamine,
all in harmonic measure, fit post-synaptic homes
just long enough to do the trick.
I drink from half-full cups of coffee every morning.
What I mean is that I'm better.
If it would do you any good I'd share my medication,
stick a needle in your arm,
draw blood to measure thyroid function.
Hormonal treatment just might help your exophthalmous -
that bugging out of your dull, hopeless eyes.

Sweet Sister, I fear your sadness - as if you'd
reach out from your world, drag me back in there with you -
as if you were an evil eye I had to hide away and not
the witness of what was, a sign of caution: what I could become again