Poetry / The Lethe
He was crying again.
She sat down quietly, outside his door,
On the short wicker chair she’d placed there
Some time ago.
She had his breakfast spread out on the shiny yellow tray.
The sparse, smiling plate, black ringing white,
Bigger than necessary.
His toast, an orange, milk, dull blue-green pills, ecstatic red ones,
The little white ones are his favorite,
Codeine, the body of Christ.
She doesn’t bring the newspaper anymore,
He doesn’t care about baseball or sales, local news, ads,
Not since the last doctor’s appointment.
Another oncologist, bunched eyebrows staring at a heart, his heart
The pale blue ribs of an x-ray,
And the small white masses near his trachea, like mushrooms.
When the doctor asked to talk with her alone,
That’s when she knew there was nothing anyone could do.
Six months, maybe more if he was lucky.
He laughed a little when she told him,
Saying now they have an excuse to go to Cancun this summer instead of the next.
That was seven months ago.
His sun still rises,
That’s really all he cares about anymore.
It rose today
Maybe it’ll rise tomorrow
He’s quiet now,
But she doesn’t move from the uncomfortable white wicker.
She’s too far away to think about the blue and crimson eyes behind the door,
Lost, staring into a wooden picture frame
Conjuring the ghosts haunting the small strip
Of photographed shoreline.
Ashen memories, a time before doctors and midnight gasping,
Wide-eyed migraine sunshine memories.
Car keys lying on the grass in Georgia, reflecting the sun,
Talking to your brother about his new job
While you were pulling your shoes off to go swimming.
Six summers ago, dinner at your mother’s farmhouse,
Laughing in her amber-colored kitchen,
Sharing roasted chicken and the wine we brought
That your mother loved.
You begged me to come with you
And I wore that yellow dress you said looked like spring.
We walked by your pond and you told me I was beautiful,
You were drunk, but happy, dusky pine trees surrounding us,
And you asked and I said yes, softly, smiling eyes
And I was beautiful with you
In misty firefly summers, eons ago
Today, she sits outside his door,
Pale as the pill trembling in her hand
Codeine, the body of Christ.
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Cancer is a very personal subject for me. When someone says that word at you, and labels you with it, everything changes. Nothing ever looks the same or means the same thing anymore.
“His sun still rises,
That’s really all he cares about anymore.
It rose today
Maybe it’ll rise tomorrow”
These are the words of a terminal person who realized the most important thing above living is simply being alive to do it.
Everything you have ever done is past, just a memory, and you can either sit alone in the hall with your ghosts, or you can go inside the room and live out someone’s last moments with them. There’s no such thing as living in the past.
The pills become as sacred as communion, a ritual necessary for life and peace.
This was a very moving poem, thanks for sharing.
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i like this, but i have to wonder if it’s really poetry, just because of the format. maybe it was a computer glitch? its happened to me before
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