Good Samaritan

Clean mirror-like floors and empty hollow halls.
Near an orange vinyl couch facing a closed
elevator door and lit up down button
sits
a lonely tree
of filigreed gold leaves
each for a victim and soldier
in a losing battle.
Names of mothers, aunts,
sisters, cousins, nieces.
Praying our daughters
will remain stars rather than
golden leaves
on a tree of death and remembrance.

White shoes make their way
skating across the mirror
as Christmas figurines surrounded by wispy cotton.
There are no presents just
burning, slashing, poisoning.
No presents and no cure
as the smell of urine and vitamins
and disinfectant permeate nostrils
too abraded to breathe life
as they once did.

Hollowed faces and empty eyes,
bodies rotting with the stench
of loss and putrid denial.
Still their memories remain
intact and they dream,
unopposed, yet fighting!




--For the Bates girls who never had a chance and the five generations of women in my family that have been taken as a result of this disease.