Hélas, my French is no longer assez bien to continue
this love note in your mother tongue, but I do marvel
at how far back we go, toi et moi, who love each other
dearly now. How we met, one bitter day in the Fall
of 1989, while I was nestled in my little flat in the 12th,
just one arrondissement away from the Hôpital
de Salpétrière where Jean-Martin Charcot first called you
by your fateful name in 1868... how I did not know
who you were, and would en fait not know you well
for several years. Mais non—certainly I'll never forget
our introduction: how you overtook me as I sat
beside the window that November morning; sent a wave
of vertigo that nearly topped me from the chair! So brief.
So powerful. Dazed, I clutched the table, wondered
Mon dieu! qu'est-ce que c'est que ça? It didn't occur
to me to ask what lifelong companion this could be.
Folly not to wonder; yet how could I possibly know?

         In the months remaining of that year, and the coming
year, and the year to come, you tiptoed more
and more through my life, though unpredictably,
and since I only briefly felt your affectionate sting,
you were never with me long enough
for me to feel I knew you like
a lover. Your trickster mystery
harrowed me, and puzzled all the doctors I spoke with,
until, a few years down the line,
I was at last enveloped by your influence. It took
a fancy test—noisy and horrible—to introduce
me to you by your given name. And now we're tight,
mon ami, ou est-ce que je veux dire mon ennemi:
these days, wherever you go, I go. And vice versa.

The French name for multiple sclerosis, a neurological affliction
first identified by a Parisian doctor in the 19th century,
is sclérose en plaques.