That was you that night, babe. Sleeping in the cool sheets, warmed with your fever. You didn't know, then, what was going to happen. Nobody did, but least of all you, on some things. But on others, maybe you knew the most. Maybe, lying there sleeping just below the pain and beyond the grip of the blue woman that shared your name, maybe you knew more then than anyone ever would. But what you did know, babe, you wouldn't tell them. You wouldn't ever share with any of them how you felt then, between the stretches of sleep. To be sure they heard your screams, most of them. But how could you tell them your pain? Nobody knew there was pain like this in the world, did they? One does not talk to a deaf man about a barking dog. For all the man may watch the dog open his head, his eyes rolling and tongue hanging. He may watch the dog strain but he does not know the bark. Yet -
Yet one might speak to a blind man about color. As you lay there, babe, and waited for someone to poke pills in your mouth, you might have told someone of some of it. Just as there is a difference between scarlet and crimson, sayeth Helen Keller, there is a difference between the smell of an orange and a grapefruit. Maybe you could have said something. Maybe. But you, babe. You were about to wake. And you wouldn't be able to tell anyone anything for a long time, because you yourself would need to be told so much…