The Remains of a Poet

She talks about the migraines God didn’t chose to heal her from, and how she learned to praise through the pain.  He thanks her.  She leaves the stage.  He starts to sing, stops, and tries again, but he just can’t do it.  He’s started to cry.  Not for himself, I feel, but for her.  And so I start crying for him.

He can identify with her, I’m sure.  Surely he’s questioned God, and cried out to him, “Why, why, why?  Why won’t you heal me?”  Why won’t God heal him? I wonder.  He could do such great things.  But no, his body is being slowly eaten by cancer.  Yes, slowly, but it’s still being eaten.  Because nice people like him get cancer; whereas the people you wish would die not only continue to live, but are also remain perfectly healthy, out of, I am convinced, pure spite.  Yet he is not crying for himself, I know.  He is crying for her.

And so I cry for him.  I cry for the life he might have known, with children instead of medical bills.  I cry because through it all he has remained so beautiful.  I cry for what was, and what might have been, and what will never be.  Mostly I cry because so often I forget that his life has been changed at all.

And as all this goes through my head, he just keeps singing ... and crying for her.