Two friends, two lives

one, a garden variety drama,

the other,

a monstrous horror movie

profanity

unfolding slowly

picking off  joys one by one

like psychopathic forces of nature

stripping away

what should have been

for one so precious:

limbs like the wind, a planet-sized brain

that crazy infectious laughter

atrophied

by the madness of grief and disbelief

I could no longer watch,

even through my fingers