Spiritus Sanctus

by Nathaniel J. Brown

Outside shocks of forsythia

heavy with rain echo your drooping

head, and even your belly generous 

with fluid. Your legs wasted, your arms 

jerk. We met because of your liver 

failure—so easy to type “lover failure” 

accidentally, and you had that, too.

You lost your wife to the same disease 

not many years ago. She was 

young, strong, undone. 

I could just imagine how you tipped 

your glasses to each other until she no longer 

could. You shared what eased the pain, pouring 

wounded selves together to forget. The suffering 

in your eyes receded as you told me, 

unprompted, how proud 

you were of her. Why, you didn’t say, 

and I dared not press. You opened 

only enough for me to glimpse 

your love, a deadly bond—bottled,

fermenting. Your face betrayed a broken 

path you knew too well having stumbled 

down it next to her, unable to turn

aside, not even after her.

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Nathaniel J Brown lives and practices medicine in New Mexico. He is most at peace hiking in mountains and deserts. Besides poetry, his interests include singing, struggling with the piano, mountaineering, and all things fermented. Recently his work has appeared in Rust and Moth, Fare Forward, Amethyst Review, and Anesthesiology, among others.