Late Night

cancer poem

I have to whisper this like it’s a

secret even though it’s not.

What’s on my tongue is full of fear

and I can’t have the wrong forces hear.

Over the past 2 weeks

his body has disappeared so fast.

His powerful thighs now

somehow smaller than mine,

which have never amounted to much.

He’s more of a mystery to me

than he’s ever been.

Inside of his body,

Swimming within his blood

I can’t tell what is right

and what is wrong.

Something pulling him away

something else pushing him back to me.

I think he feels better,

but maybe that is him still taking care of me?

All of him has always been benevolent;

the field that we live and love within

always warm and secure inside the presence of everything he has always been.

In the beginning

we agreed that he would be the steady,

the one who would ground the frayed

live wire frenzy of my inner terrain.

He has become, over decades, the map

for my head and my heart;

my magnetic north.

The wobble of this change terrifies me.

I am at once

revving and also decompensating

into an automated hologram of myself in

an effort to conserve an energy

and a stamina I am so scared I don’t have

without him to draw from.

Disentangling source

from my love for him

is grotesque, nauseating… cruel.

Trust and faith are tangled inside of me.

I have been fooled

by my hopefulness and naivety.

Never had any bravado, just a lot of luck and wonder.

And yet I’ll still sing my thanks,

not sure how to breath and not give it,

so continue like this.

Forever if it’s what I’ve got.