Listening to CFIDS: Kirsten Loechell

Riding the Wave

I never keep up, I lose ground, I give up, I'm exhausted.
But here, what's this?
A hand reaching out to help me. Desperately I reach out.
When I catch up the hand is gone.
I can't do it anymore.
It hurts too much.
There's nobody there anyway.
The effort is exhausting,
hope is only a quickly fading illusion.
If only there were no outstretched,
enticing hands promising to help.
Then I would let go and find peace.
I'm waiting for the next wave to lend me a hand
so I can climb on board,
Take another exhausting, breath-taking,
grueling ride
It's fun if I can ignore the pain
But mostly it's endurance and wondering
if this is the wave that will throw me back
to even less energy and still more pain.
The wave comes and the hand takes me one more time.
So nice to be like others for a while.
To do, to act, to live.
What I really want is to go to a waveless place
and just float there for a while.

Or is it death?

Reproduced with permission from CATHARSIS, volume 13, June 1994.

© Kirsten Loechell, 1996

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