DIAGNOSIS

This illness is degenerative,

it gradually weakens the communicative tissue,

shrinks the skin

(so sensitivity to caresses is lost),

reduces our field of vision

(so it's limited to the book we're reading).

Even talking becomes tiresome,

and every time we make a noise

it comes out with a long grey pseudopod

and stays there, floating in the living-room,

as if that were its final destination:

a strange amoeba that disregards bedtime.

It affects our hearing, we turn bunker-deaf.

Taste buds and tongue are eventually paralysed

and the nose becomes an antennae adept at detecting

the stink of a complaint or

the sickly-sweetness of a sigh.

Diagnosis:

Cyclical cancer of the silence

Incubation period:

Spouts of impatience

Relapses (unless the science of forgiveness

finds other remedies):

As many as the fuck-ups perpetrated by one or another

Prophylactic treatment:

Dinner at a pretty restaurant

every so often, and, every single day,

a happy thought with your 'good morning'.

© Miren Agur Meabe