Category: health

The Answer

3:33 AM
Startled awake
The answer
there, on the brink

Of course I lose it
rising to answer another call
Oh, how it taunts

Try to recapture the moment
find the right twist of body
as if I’m a radio tuner
signal lost

And what answer would that be, anyway?
Now fully awake, pondering questions –
only one applies

This newly formed fear
I’ve dared not voice it –
it cuts deep

Is there an answer
and if so, do I want to hear it?

I fall back to sleep
awake hours later
mind blissfully empty.

(Image my own)

Discord

Does illness have a voice,
and if so; is it melancholy,
or dark and dank, divulging
deepest despair, or revealing
a vileness of nature?

Discord creeps along my veins,
disrupts muscles, systems failing
under the oppression –
“Stay strong,” friends counsel,
cannot hear the gathering storm,
feel the heaviness cloaking me.

I am not myself, but then;
who am I? Is disease a mutation
of the original sin – punishment
for fatal sins, or redemption
wrapped as trial – the whispers
gain clarity – I am faltering…

(Discord originally appeared here May, 2019. Image my own. Living with chronic, often debilitating disease, is an ongoing challenge. There is no cure, no end in sight, and yet, we must go on. This is for my fellow warriors, wondering, some days, what it is all about.)

My Spirit Stands Strong

Progress, seldom linear,
tosses me into unexpected decline,
stranded and incapacitated.

My son with labour-hardened arms
leaps to my side, steadying me
and I feel the fear in his caring grip

My daughter, ever compassionate,
reaches out, eyes filled with horror
as my body crumples onto the bed.

My husband, my oak, seeks to comfort
his voice betraying the helplessness
this futile predicament imposes.

Beloveds, I know that you see me
this dis-abled, non-functioning shell
weakened and sickly, lying on this bed

Do not be deceived-
it is only an illusion –
vessel temporarily fettered

I am in essence, as before
ambitions and desires intact
hold this version of me

Sense the wholeness of my being
the woman I am yet to be –
my spirit stands strong.

(My Spirit Stands Strong first appeared here August, 2015; edited for this version.
Image my own)

Not Dead Yet

There is safety in apart-ment living;
would corral the little ones, declare
responsibility, obligations as a mask
for this self-banishing compulsion…

except that I am lying prone, exposed –
brains spilling onto concrete – shadows
revealing the darkness of my condition,
hopelessly locked in physical inertia.

I am an unwitting contributor to
scientific (and pseudo) probing:
audacious autopsies pronouncing
conclusive evidence of motives.

Too polite (and weakened) to deflect,
I submit, demonstrating complacency,
sacrificing autonomy; fail to assert
that it is I who is taking this life test.

And, by the way, am passing quite
adequately, which defies all rational
diagnosis and prognosis, and serves
to reassure me of ultimate success.

(Not Dead Yet first appeared here June, 2016. Image my own.)

Absence

Slippers, perched at night stand,
twitching impatiently,
mark the absence of feet,
cannot appreciate the meaning
of unruffled bed covers.

Abandoned, a coffee mug
bemoans its curdling contents,
complains of thick brown lines
contaminating its porcelain shine,
has not noted absence of hands.

Chair, pushed back from desk,
in partial rotation, sits awkwardly,
commanding attention, disturbed
by its misalignment, has not thought
to ponder absence of body.

House, uncomfortable with silence,
creaks unnaturally, loudly voicing
objections to the absence of footfalls,
automated machinery and incessant
rings, beeps, and chimes of technology.

I try to reassure them that the absence
is only temporary, that the man whose
presence so strikingly fills this space
will return, hope they cannot read
the apprehension in my tremulous heart.

(Absence was written six years ago, while my husband recovered from a triple bypass. Image my own.)