A half hour telephone conversation

You crack jokes about tumours and drugs
and what my mother would think
if I told her you're in a wheelchair.

You've been arrested twice in the past month
and when you talk to me
you forget simple words like
biopsy
and benign.

You have a doctor's appointment tomorrow
and the results are going to take
at least one week

but instead you talk about
protests and fascists
and my mother
and visas
and things that don't matter

and at 5 in the morning
your eyes start to close
and you admit that you're drunk

I knew all along

because you slurred your words
and lost your train of thought more than once
and kept saying my name over and over
and when I asked you what time you were going to the doctor
you kept saying, in the morning. And I finally gave up.

We hung up, you saying I love you I love you I love you
and I

walked down a flight of stairs, once moving, now still
into a tunnel

and watched the trains go by
and waited.