Cancer Season

A poem from summer of 2022

My brother always claimed to dying young, a wish in the fountain of the Grim Reapers waters.

A self-fulfilling prophecy.

While I fight to die old.

It astounds me how I use to be ok watching you be probed.

Needles sticking and clicking into your skin like a piercing gun in front of a Claire’s store.

You must feel like an outlet mall, I’m the only one walking inside.

I have to walk up and down on the escalator because it keeps breaking.

But I ache now when I go in to hug you, all I’m holding onto is just bones.

Drink up all that milk before you go.

You grind your teeth in your sleep,

While pacing in the small house when you’re awake.

Sometime I don’t know how to respond because the looking glass hasn’t been cleaned since the first day of spring.

Our lives are one big dress rehearsal that keeps getting longer.

Doctor appointments.

Prescription pain pills.

Traffic.

Frozen in the car together I pretend we are in a movie by one of your favorite directors.

I’m the girl with less character development but I give the best I can.

The echos of moaning in agony that now sound like a beat of a song I can’t shake out of my head.

Sleeping with one eye open while I can hardly dream at all.

What’s the point in living out a dream when it can’t be shared with you?

I feel so vulnerable because there’s nothing I could do to fix him.

Shadow boxing him in case he needs something concrete.

A pillow.

A sandwich.

My unconditional love.

He’s in the kitchen puking whatever sat in his stomach for the day.

I can taste the acid in the back of my throat.

I wonder if he knows that.