A speaker watches someone they love struggle through each day, weighed down by memory and pain. The poem uses vivid images of harpies and phantoms to capture that weight, returning again and again to one wish: the ability to heal them.
I see you pushing through each day. Gone are the days of thriving. Now you merely survive from one second to the next. The daily chores, the day-to-day execution of tasks and errands ran. Watch the balance descend from points of sale and ATMs. I see you lugging all that baggage from the harpies and phantoms of memories that dwell in your body, mind, and soul. Oh, I see you. I want to hold you in my arms, warm, loving, bare embrace, tight, bosom to bosom, so tight I could squeeze you so that all the hurt and suffering would expel from your pores, drizzle of tears to damming the outpouring Pouring of mourning, I hear you. Your lamented words languishing without a hint of hope. There is only one pessimistic discourse slipping through the lips. The intonation of each syllable, the melancholy timbre verbalize the woeful recounts of all the days gone by. Oh, hear you. What can I do but pray? Echoing appeals of mercy and redemption to the heavens, starry masses of angelic hosts in the great twinkling expanse of the unknown. I feel you. The painful burdens of your aging body, the pain that buries your smile deep within the bowels of your heart, veiled from the grief of each numbered day without the sun. I hurt. You hurt. He hurts. She hurts. They hurt. We all are hurting, though we deny the truth of reality that this is all temporary and will soon pass. Still, we remain kept in step, waltzing to the heartbeat of time that keeps us alive. It forces us to muddle through half-dazed daylight and restless nights. From twilight to dawn of another day, grateful for this day, but still suffering, suffering, suffering, suffering. If I had but only one wish, I would wish I could heal you.
