Keeping the tears inside

While we are together

I cannot allow my face to show

The pain I feel over seeing you

Reduced to this state

Of hollowness

My heart aches with the sense of it

The dragging slowness of your gait

The eyes that seem to just plead

Oh so silently for freedom

Seeing you this way makes me feel so helpless

And when you share of another patient’s suicide

I start to cry

How can they do this to the already vulnerable

Already the drugs have stolen far too much of you

And I do not know if you can ever return this time

I will stay with you for as long as I can

But when the time comes to leave

It takes such an effort of will

You will never know the many years I cried all of the way home

Or of how in the silence I long for the sister I love

To somehow some way

Find her freedom