Oath

The candle inside him
flickers soft and violent.
Red to orange,
yellow to white.
A girl watches his heart
and she wants to cry,
but only for him.
Maybe she can help.

The jigsaw pieces
strewn on the linoleum floor.
He sits among them,
frantic, trying to fit them
together the way that
they once were.
She watches him sadly;
a scream tears from his throat

Strapped to the bed
in the dizzying white haze
of a hospital room.
He weeps to be released,
he has done nothing wrong,
please, God, someone help him.
Leaning against the wall
outside, she silently listens.

He will never remember
what it is that he did.
Leprosy of the mind, he has,
and he will never be the same.
She kneels outside his room,
clutching to her chest
a locket with a picture
of them before the sickness.

Years go by, decades pass,
and he becomes a shell.
She has moved on,
but he remembers her now and then.
He sits on his bed,
murmuring in another tongue.
Looks out the window
and waits.

~*~