Sickbed

It’s in weakness that sickness gains its strength.

A concierge of platitudes accompanies the descent.

“Feel better,” “Get well,” and yet lethargy gets the best of those words.

Head on a square excuse for a pillow, you develop a more microscopic view.

You seem to look more intently at the intricacy of a plain wall, the divots in the railing of a hospital bed, or the faint signs of a more empowered life outside of the walls and windows that contain you.

Though whatever has your body arrested, is precisely what restrains you from emerging from your sickbed.

A cacoon no butterfly wishes to endure.

And how long must those who are sick endure it?

Well, unfortunately, until they get better.

If they get better.

Time is measured by illness, in moments that last all too long.

Eventually one wonders: is giving into the sickness… giving up?

I’d argue that all muscles, the heart included, even the heaviest and strongest ones that have performed the longest, and loved the hardest, they too, get tired.

Sickness often has untold sufferings that happen in silent moments, and for those who’ve escaped its grasp and returned to the life force, there always remains that aftertaste.

The fear that the weakness lies dormant in the unpredictability of vivacity and that someday, in some way, at some point, makes its comeback.

Returning to steal your vitality once more.

Out of the dark, robbing an unsuspecting life, sickness is the most successful of thieves.

So now, even though always suspicious, even when they are only bored “sick”,

those who know the meaning, suffering, and weakness of a blank wall,

they too, know the redefined importance of art, of living.

And how, if one day, you must return to the sickness, succumb yet again to a weakened state, and are forced to look again at that blank wall,–

then while you are able, take all the pictures.

Decorate your life and space with captured memories and art that encourages reminiscing.

Enough to say that even though you may be jealous of the beings outside of those walls, unburdened by sickness and its imposing microscopic worldview,

yours is decorated enough to have something to look at, and back on.

Those moments, even sickness, can’t steal.

A blank wall, regardless of where it resides,

is one of potential.

And potential, is the home of hope.

Regardless of the view that sickness gifts us, may we never lose sight of that.