It's Still Life

A Friend: Our Forty Year Stitch

Forty years.

We have worn grooves
into each other’s silences.

Whole conversations
once lived
between cigarettes,
coffee cups,
the long turning
of daylight.

Now he slips
toward somewhere else,

then surfaces again
at the sound of my voice.

I do not reach
to hold him here.

I sit beside the bed,
straighten the blanket,
pass him water.

Outside,
someone closes a car door.

A bird startles
from the hedge.

Between us,

the slow stitch
of another hour.

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Some images created with Midjourney; all writing is authentically my own original work.©Misky 2006-2026.