Hades

"You missed a bit", she says examining my chin.  Bit late now, and does it matter, where we are going?

We travel, hell for leather, south, at seventy miles an hour. The official limit.
Others about head the same way.  We, like starlings in formation; following the great instinct. swooping and driving, millimeters from touching, and disintegrating.

My life coach asked me how I see myself in five - ten years time.  In ten year time my father did not realise that he had but two more.  What would we do if we were given our last date? I find this liberating, like the peace people describe when deciding to end their own lives.

The only day that exists in now, this moment.  It is like the top of a curing wave.  Exhilarating for a moment, then crashing on the beach.

We are visiting our dear friend who has advanced stages of lung cancer.
We are visiting the living.  It's smiles and facial beauty that emanate life.

In Poland they discourage all talk of 'a battle'; bravely fighting against this invader.  These cells are our own.  We made them, like our children.  To fight is to lose.  Who can win a war? 

Pain is a pain, especially when it burns like a discordant lance protruding from a breast plate.

We clutch each other- and sometimes we know that  this will be the last; last for a very long time.  Then it is quietly known that this is  'the date that must not be named', the 'yang' to DOB.

living at the cutting edge of time.  And the next moment we will be together.

'Old Folville', a knight brought in from the cold.
He died whilst jousting and his effigy has
 the spike of a lance protruding
from his rib cage.