64 lines
1.7 KiB
Plaintext
64 lines
1.7 KiB
Plaintext
|
Tissue Sample
|
||
|
|
2022-05-19
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
***
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
How do I come to terms
|
||
|
|
with the fact that I will die?
|
||
|
|
How do I look my mother in the eyes
|
||
|
|
and say, "You won't have me
|
||
|
|
for that much more time?"
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
I look in your eyes,
|
||
|
|
and I see a flame
|
||
|
|
that burns so bright,
|
||
|
|
that signals something
|
||
|
|
arriving
|
||
|
|
just over the horizon.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
I expected to be dying by now,
|
||
|
|
strength fleeing from my limbs,
|
||
|
|
lungs crushed by anxiety
|
||
|
|
like the world itself was closing in.
|
||
|
|
I got all my homework done early
|
||
|
|
in February
|
||
|
|
even though graduation was three
|
||
|
|
months away, not knowing
|
||
|
|
what state I would be in,
|
||
|
|
six months from onset
|
||
|
|
being the low end.
|
||
|
|
But except for the sores that pulse
|
||
|
|
in movement's fury and sleeptime's lull,
|
||
|
|
I'm just as healthy as ever.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
I'm searching my body for every possible sign
|
||
|
|
that the end is coming, that looms my demise.
|
||
|
|
And I am in pain, I will admit,
|
||
|
|
but not nearly enough to classify myself as sick.
|
||
|
|
I'm in a science classroom, with scalpel prodding myself.
|
||
|
|
Clean up the experiment, jar me up, return me to the shelf
|
||
|
|
in tanager's formaldehyde, amber sleep, sanctioned suicide.
|
||
|
|
You haven't really died until you've returned to the earth,
|
||
|
|
I think, given back the dust in your bones
|
||
|
|
to this planet that insists it be your home.
|
||
|
|
You haven't really disappeared
|
||
|
|
until your body has dispersed so much
|
||
|
|
that nobody can point at the ground and say,
|
||
|
|
"The person I love now rests here."
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
This vessel, I hope, will not be preserved
|
||
|
|
in a morgue, under a man's care, final horror.
|
||
|
|
My body was never ever really mine
|
||
|
|
in this life.
|
||
|
|
Mother still sometimes cries
|
||
|
|
that I'm not a doll anymore,
|
||
|
|
won't wear dresses anymore.
|
||
|
|
Will she keep me around when my body moves nevermore,
|
||
|
|
preserved, plasticized,
|
||
|
|
mannequin most lifelike?
|
||
|
|
Deny me Velouria's embrace one last time?
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
***
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander
|