64 lines
1.7 KiB
Text
64 lines
1.7 KiB
Text
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Tissue Sample
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2022-05-19
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***
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How do I come to terms
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with the fact that I will die?
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How do I look my mother in the eyes
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and say, "You won't have me
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for that much more time?"
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I look in your eyes,
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and I see a flame
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that burns so bright,
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that signals something
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arriving
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just over the horizon.
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I expected to be dying by now,
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strength fleeing from my limbs,
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lungs crushed by anxiety
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like the world itself was closing in.
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I got all my homework done early
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in February
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even though graduation was three
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months away, not knowing
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what state I would be in,
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six months from onset
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being the low end.
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But except for the sores that pulse
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in movement's fury and sleeptime's lull,
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I'm just as healthy as ever.
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I'm searching my body for every possible sign
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that the end is coming, that looms my demise.
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And I am in pain, I will admit,
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but not nearly enough to classify myself as sick.
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I'm in a science classroom, with scalpel prodding myself.
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Clean up the experiment, jar me up, return me to the shelf
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in tanager's formaldehyde, amber sleep, sanctioned suicide.
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You haven't really died until you've returned to the earth,
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I think, given back the dust in your bones
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to this planet that insists it be your home.
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You haven't really disappeared
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until your body has dispersed so much
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that nobody can point at the ground and say,
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"The person I love now rests here."
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This vessel, I hope, will not be preserved
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in a morgue, under a man's care, final horror.
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My body was never ever really mine
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in this life.
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Mother still sometimes cries
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that I'm not a doll anymore,
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won't wear dresses anymore.
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Will she keep me around when my body moves nevermore,
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preserved, plasticized,
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mannequin most lifelike?
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Deny me Velouria's embrace one last time?
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***
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CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander
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