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.

To All the Nursing Students

To all the nursing students I wish to say

try to contain your glee

at the prospect of flushing

your first

or second

or third

or any IV

I know you are excited to hold

in your hands for the first time the IV tubing

because now you feel like a real nurse 

and your brain is ticking through

the list of bulletpoints

all of the steps for a flawless first run

because you will double check

and triple check in your head

and that IV will purr and drip perfectly

You are here to learn and execute procedures perfectly

So let me educate you that the stop-start 

technique for flushing a central line with 10cc's of saline

is hell on earth for me.  

It does not taste "salty" or "like saline"

it tastes like you zested the bitter white rind of a lemon 

and served it with four ounces of Windex

shaken not stirred.

And I am already so sick of life

the medical shows like House, and Critical, and The Knick that used to

amuse me so in the past are unbearable for me now.

In the end, when it is the worst I just

cannot think or fight or reason,

which is why when you are a nurse you are an advocate

and that doesn't mean just being loud--

which, let me tell you, 

you all need to shut the fuck up when you are charting or giving report, and 

yes, I am talking to you, night shift,

your sick, exhausted, nauseated, in agony patients are trying to will themselves to hang on 10 more seconds.

Nobody cares about your problems--

your patient already had 99 of them

and you do not need to be the 100th--

please! 

Advocacy does not mean being loud.

It does not mean ask, "What do you need?"

it means you best know what your patient needs

It means anticipate

that maybe right after chemo infusion 

your patient may be calling you because of nausea so run

do not walk.

I know you're tired, shit, I am more tired than you, but I'm still here, so

use your brain.

Solve the problem before it becomes a problem.

Try to put yourself into my shoes.

You see me here heaving do you not?

Perhaps instead of asking "Do you need another basin?"

run for whatever 

PRN antiemetic anxiolytics you got on hand

and if you don't have anything else 

call the doctor and tell them to order something

and for fuck sake

make it IV-push.

These are the worst days of my life,

knuckles white in agony,

thrashing in the bed

in so much pain you cannot form a thought

and you are part of this 

and I will remember your face forever,

so try, try to imagine what it's like to be me, and try to move heaven and earth for me

because you might be me, 

and I may be you one day,

and you'd want me to do that for you.

To All the People Who Have Said

To all the people who have said

You are so

brave

incredibly strong

inspiring

I wonder what you would think

if you could see me now

viciously sniffing back snot

wiping tears with displaced malevolence 

towel stuffed between teeth to muffle the cries

sitting on the edge of the tub 

shaking

shaking

just can't stop shaking

like a dog, cowering 

staring at the porcelain pit

fighting the ball of fear-or is it vomit-

and rocking to silence the voices in my head

like prayers on a rosary

I don't want to do this

You have to

I can't

You must

Get it together

Please, don't make me

I cannot do this

One

More

Time

I Have Now Met Death

I have now met death six times by my count in 28 years.

First, while still in the womb,
my mother, sweating with fever
that climbed from the dry cradle inside her
through the vein that fed me,
to the arteries into her body,
and threatened to engulf us both.

Second, cowering under a car,
face ground into the oil stained cement,
chassis digging into my back,
as men threw their bodies at each other
in the name of pride.
We were so scared, Carina and I,
that one of them would realize there were two
little girls listening to them beat each other around us.

Third, as a child, feeling for the first time
the sting of rejection of a body of peers
who turned crayons into scalpels
and words into knives--
who shamed me for the first time
and brought me into the knowledge
that body image is a thing, and fat shaming is a power
more strong than the cells in my brain,
or the sweetness of my heart.
I twisted the two ends of a beach towel,

head in the loop
until my face turned candy red, then purple,
and my mother happened upon me,
and I turned and mouthed: "Look, Mommy,"
then let go and cried.

The fourth, I was 18, and stupidly, ignorantly
let a man rip out my heart.
I think I've always been a little stunted because of that,
like a tree with two limbs, where there clearly should be three.
Luckily, I had been indoctrinated enough
to think suicide was a sin,
so I tried to find someone to kill me in the
dangerous backwoods of sweet, sleepy Brunswick, Maine.
It was my saving grace.  Thank...God.
The only thing that shocks me now,
is how little I feel for a man who once meant so much to me.

The fifth was when I was 20
and drank myself so deep into the bottle
I almost never came out again,

because I realized I had spent my whole life
training for an unattainable dream.

That night my poor room mate sat with me
head by my chest, praying I'd breathe just one more time.

The sixth, was when the chemo they said
was my only hope for survival--the one that
doesn't have strong side effects on the majority of patients--
nearly killed me, nearly wrung me dry
like a water skin in a parched man's hands

so I can confidently say that I am
less so afraid of dying
more so simply not quite sated with living,
not because death is not permanent
or terrifying
or unknown
but because I am 28

and yes, that is a lot younger than many
but it is not younger than most.
This is true throughout history,
this is true, even in my own city,
my country, my world,
people more deserving than me
and less deserving than me--

people who haven't lived long enough to deserve anything--
are dying--and that is just time.

And it brings me a sense of balance,
if not a sense of peace or complete freedom from disquiet,
that I am no more special than any other being
to have walked this earth,
that the mutation inside of me is a part of nature's law to evolve
and that I am just a dot on a parabola that shifts
with the demands of an evolutionary process we have defied.
Who am I to escape what others have not,
who am I to be spared the terrors of
the plagues, the droughts, the wars,
to have been born in my time and my circumstance?
Had I any choice or any power that

I be spared those sufferings
and the sufferings to come as surely as our sun shines?
I would count myself blessed.
So Death, come, kiss me, and take me, or not.
I do not fear your coming,
but if I have any say,
I would like to drink a while longer

while we sit together.

A King's Thoughts (for my friend, Larry)

There are days when I forget I have cancer,
when I forget the crippling power
of the unknown variables freed from the shroud of ignorance,
and begin to move forward,
days when I forget that my best laid plans
are nothing but chaff spilled from a child's hands
awaiting the next strong gust,
days when the competitive edge in me gnaws
at my restraints, ears flicking at the passage of time,
straining to be released.
And then there are days like this:
to hear your cancer has resurfaced,
after what you have done, in spite of the statistic
one percent survival--
to hear a man so full of love and laughter,
kindness, gentleness,
an embrace sure as a stallion's neck,
has not slipped the bridle of this cursed disease.
This is how the early rulers
must have felt looking over the plains
sprawled out before their kingdoms,
at the glowing dots of beacon fires
lighting one, by one, slowly, each brighter than the last,
the time lapse between each flame reducing,
and then all at once, the mountainside
bursting aflame, leading straight to the gates,
the last a scorching inferno exploding
in oil and dry kindling,
bearing the news that an ally,
after much battle,
is near overrun
and calls for aid.
It must have still'd even the bravest heart,
to know even as one has prepared,
stored, trained, envisioned--
even as one strived to break free the divination,
that even as one's fallow land has,
after much transudation and lamentation,
ripened with burgeoning wheat,
another's nation is smoldering under the razing of its land.
They must have looked upon
labor of their fields,
upon the stones of their fortitudes,
doubled the guard,
donned their armor,
steeled the fear piercing their viscera,
while praying that the plea was not
an omen.

To Believe in God: the Christian Chapter

To believe in God is audacious and impudent. 
It is a purposeful, conscious decision to live in blindness.  
Furthermore,
for a human to believe that his God 
is the right God and the only God 
is to embrace bigotry and intolerance
and to revel in elitism shrouded in false humility.
For the idea of God is war with humanity.