The Thing About Life

The thing about life is
we're all walking around with timers
ticking down inside of us.
Usually, they're silent and faceless--
it's easy to forget
they're counting down.
You always imagine you have
enough seconds to last you
80, 90 years,
and then the timer will dial to zero
when you're warm in your bed
surrounded by family,
maybe at night after Thanksgiving dinner,
when your belly is full of
red wine and honey glazed ham.
Even if once in a while you'll have the macabre thought
"I might get hit by a bus tomorrow,"
but by dinnertime
you'll have forgotten your resolution
to live life well,
and gone back to watching reruns of
The Walking Dead.
But when you know
that the cancer inside of you has an 80% chance
of coming back
and killing you in the next 5 years--
maybe it'll be 2 years
or 2 months
or 5 years and 1 day--
the ticking becomes audible.
You still don't have the timer face.
You just walk around,
listening to the life
tick tick ticking out of you,
trying to not
let the uncertainty paralyze you,
trying to not
flinch with every jarring advance of the second hand,
trying to not
lose your mind,
as you fight the instinct
to walk around with your eyes squeezed shut,
bracing for the impact with death,
because any second could be your last.

The Thing About Strength

"I wish I had your inner strength
to deal with everything you've had to
this last year."
My friend said this last night.
The thing about strength is
it doesn't exist.
Yes, we qualify strength--
muscles
mettle
mental endurance
yet no amount of strength
can overpower
the ocean
the fire
the plague
or cancer.
I have learned that
life decides when to kill us,
dragging us to the edge,
letting us scramble back.
Each time we think
in our egotistical, ignorant way
that we defeated it,
that we beat it into submission,
that we had a choice in the matter,
that we had any control whatsoever,
Life is laughing,
swirling a glass of cabernet.
Life has no respect for who you are
or what you have done
or what you hope to do
or could do in the future.
She does not cooperate.
It is the greatest fallacy
that we tell ourselves
we are strong enough
or fast enough
or smart enough
because you can't outrun
something that is .0004 microns
or something that spontaneously
grows inside of you, out of you, made from you.