He wasn’t the kind
to talk about love.
And I didn’t need
to dig very deep
to know how little
of it he’d seen. But Lord,
that Tom could find the joke
in any conversation.
And man, he could fix anything—
and he’d fix it for you,
for free, too, if you
were his friend.
But even Tom couldn’t
fix the white blood cells
as they grew and multiplied.
His hair fell out. Came back in
with curls. In the end,
though his bone marrow
could not be cured,
it was his heart that healed.
He learned to give
and receive love, too,
he learned the joy
of gratitude. I cried
when his lover
told me this: He died
with love on his lips.