i’ve gathered you all here to tell you i have leukemia
he remarked as if this 17-month old secret
was simply another announcement of policy or procedure change
a fundraising site confirmation date or news of a generous check
received from a donor in this afternoon’s mail…
so, now i must take this news pack it into a small container
and travel with it on tomorrow’s flight this unexpected and unwelcomed vagrant hitchiking on my emotions interrupting the silence with shouts and distractions its voice will scream at me sink me into a well of darkness its scents stinking up each place with the smells of death and chemo’s poisons it will creep over me like dread like the taste of iron and bile in my mouth it will punch me in the forehead sicken the spirit of my belly when instead i should be dancing happily alone in places i have never been when the beauty around me should be all that matters …
it all makes sense now, i remarked back to him when all i really wanted to do
was kick the wall scream and run from the building with unwanted tears
in hot pursuit
why is it always the good guys, i ask again
the newts and the georges and the sarahs and the fallwells the o’reillys, the hecks
the killers the mistakes the wastelands of human spirit the dregs and the hate-filled ones
thrive and live their long and non-compassionate arrogant lives
while the good guys repeatedly are left
to face an unfair road passing through chemical sickness
onto the runway toward
another too-early plunge
while facing the funhouse mirrors
of one’s own mortality…
OMG… this frightens me, saddens me, and makes me wonder too why the nasty thrive and the kind suffer. Is there such a thing as fairness?