Sometimes your most hated enemy, the person

who makes you sick the most,

the one you would trust with absolute certainty

to piss you off more than any other…

is the one that will hold your hand at the end.

For years they stuck the knife in whenever possible

and dismissed your name with the ease of a

camel drawing breath or the ferocity of a kitten

with aspirations and desires to be a lion in charge of a pack…

and yet they will mop your burning brow as you slip away.

Their twisted thoughts involving pokers, firing squad,

Hangman’s Noose, drowning you in a vat of brown sauce

or simply ignoring you and pretending your birth was

just a blip in the subconscious of Humanity’s worst nightmare…

will when the clock strikes its fatal tune, comfort you and close your eyes.

Ian D. Hall. 2015