Friend, your mirror has two faces but does it matter, really, if in either we can be  right where you want?

First mirror, first face:  You of our first meeting, Winter '96, your cheeks full & eyes wide, strong as the stance of your wholly wholesome frame.  The disease though, was already there, little despicable sinus-nibbler as was your anxiety's grip.

Over too brief time, with each admission, I learned the symptoms of both, compassion being a guide to go with you through hospital halls, down to the cafe, & to learn in small peeps, enough about your spirit.  You were the fussy, kind man of big business, you of the perfection, the control & guarded caring prizing, above all, your privacy, your pride.  You - the small-town boy who made good & better in education, money, jobs, you travelling the whole globe to recall architecture, sculptures, museums & cuisines, having your flings, attempts at the deeper, but always in the end, the essence of aloneness.

Mea culpa said I, only another Earth-tourist my entire life & it all so astonishing to find by the time of your last admission, how love took place.  Still, it was all so simple, for what did you demand?  Just meds, an ear to hear you & I, a hider, water-over-my-head, with you already lost to me, lost in time out of mind.

But never mind anyway, said the mirror's second side - you reeling towards your reflection above the glaringly white sink, where you had to fold up your owe bad eye just to see & looked, though sunken, quite like Peter Falk in Columbo, & quite like heaven too.

In delirium we spoke about the geraniums your family gave, that wicker basket overflowing on the sill next to your glasses & wallet, those gentility vestiges, & even if you had no recollection - never mind, never mind - I cast aside all incidentals, knowing you reached for my hand, said you do so much, you are the only.

Our heads were in the mirror, at first brow to brow, then the back of your skull, your neck, went to my right side, against the shoulder, & then I said what you said, that I loved you like nobody.