A Hopeless Case, Alex Rettie

A Hopeless Case

No playful game of truth or dare,
expensive psychiatric care,
nor days and nights of fervent prayer
can make him well.

His fingers run through thinning hair;
his face is frozen in a glare
at memories he cannot share
of some dead hell.

If you could sit with him a while,
you think, you might just make him smile:
It’s always been your special style
to raise the dead.

Be careful, please. Your kind of skill
assumes existence of a will
to live, and not of one to kill
that will instead.