Friendship

Will Nixon

He does his walking in the kitchen now. His little box of tricks, a silver snap case of pills in chalk and orange, now plays its own tricks. But his mind hasn't aged a day in years. He pins his latest aphorisms to the fridge.

"Having a neurological disease like Parkinson's is like dancing each day with a new and sadistically energetic partner who has two left feet."

No longer.

Parkinson's wants a divorce.

Parkinson's is the raging monkey wildly shaking his simian arms to get out of this tree, or refusing to live in this zoo and freezing up in a pout.

We prefer to talk about library politics.

Last week he fell for no reason. The bruise beside his eye is as green as the Gowanus canal, not that we have any reason to think of the Gowanus canal. 

No coffee this morning, but he has orange juice to offer.

He manages the carton from the fridge to the counter, but his step becomes a stumble that is life on his feet. He grips the counter for a railing, holds forth the glass.

The orange juice is a choppy sea.

I drink it like medicine.

Something else keeps us alive.

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Will Nixon is the author of the poetry collections, My Late Mother as a Ruffed Grouse and Love in the City of Grudges, and the co-author of The Pocket Guide to Woodstock and Walking Woodstock: Journeys into the Wild Heart of America's Most Famous Small Town. His website is willnixon.com