Still

We started a group you know
After we knew
We’d meet at the library, mapping out neurons
Pitting delivery systems against the blood brain barrier
Pinpointing your pain to a specific spot in the human genome
Thinking about enzyme replacement
Using words like deficiency, degenerative, and disease
It was desperate research
It couldn't save you
But we clung to it like it could
Allowed ourselves the faint unspoken hope
That we’d see something
That knowing you, meant we’d look at your brain differently
See something people with PhD’s and published studies couldn't
Eventually the meetings stopped
I still have my work book
Titled with words I couldn't pronounce before all this
Filled with diagrams and notes
Questions and Chemicals
Neat pencil marks and diagrams
All of this pain, packaged and quantified,
Sectioned off into boxes and chemical interactions
I know in the most minute chemical detail, how this rube Goldberg
Machine inside of you is failing
And I sit here
Watching you fade
Watching your brain drown in poison
And for all of these diagrams, and chemicals and Latin words floating around in my head
I am just as helpless as everyone else