you'll eat it and you'll like it

Another ordinary evening. Someone is showering loudly
while Jody and I lie here. We've watched today dwindle
Tuesday unpinning her dim hair, dark curls drooping
evening lowering over us and our complicated collections of bones.
Our empty insides are grinding, so we gorge ourselves on talking
and I'm carefully eating everything Jody says.
Remember this, I think, It will matter to you later.
See, Jody is Nearly Not Here. And even though people do come back,
occasionally hobble home from I Feel Sick, or Hey!
I Went a Little Overboard,
there is no coming back after Nearly Not Here.
All the same, we play the game. Not much else to do.
We've covered You're Alright, and
Today I Am Considering Eating That.
But not Watch Out! You Are Nearly Not Here.
That one never works. Anyway, it's all just junk.
Jody knows she is Nearly Not Here. She's a slip of a thing,
as they say, and getting slippier every day.
She does not look All Right. She does not look Okay.
She makes you think words like Subhuman, think
Internal Haemorrhaging. And Organ Collapse.
She is sprawled under the piano, appearing unconscious
(as is her way), kicking the stool as I play Rachmaninov.
Her own fingers do not bend. Too brittle.
She has been told not to make fists, but she forgets.
I sometimes think you just forgot to grow up, Jodes,
I say to her, and she kicks my calf. Hard. Well.
She's not dead yet. The piano jangles. Angry. I look at her.
Whaddaya gonna do? she says and shrugs, then grins,
though I see it hurts her, because she is lying, and badly, too.
Yep, I know how this one goes.
It is Please Let's Just Pretend I Haven't Given Up.
I calculate the bones on show
and oh how I hope and hope I haven't got it right.
But I've played this game before, and I know by now
the ending never changes. It always ends in tears.