destined to live, listening closely to a silence that would take a lifetime to express

One day when they are alone, Robert Mapplethorpe says to her: “Patti I’m dying. It is so painful.” Patti helps him to the couch and sits with him until he falls asleep. As she thinks of how unendurable his life has become, she thinks: “The light poured through the windows upon his photographs and the poem of us sitting together a last time. Robert dying: creating silence. Myself, destined to live, listening closely to a silence that would take a lifetime to express…” from Just Kids by Patti Smith