Who knew?
Ugg!
The lurk, the shirk, the sting, the thing.
Blur, blank, blinder, blink.
There were those super-specific moments — fixed in memory now like old family photographs — the fatigue, the fever, the test, the spike, the biopsy.
Then it was Christmas, and work, questions, and finally — the doctor’s office.
“It’s cancer.”
Sleep walking to the parking lot, the surreal drive to lunch, at home in the evening in a soft chair — the fading sun.
We wake at night.
We ply the web.
We fumble through vocabulary.
We blanch at complications, fear treatments, shrink from side effects. We wipe our eyes through memoirs. We question questions, hang out in online communities, consult consultations, brood, balk, blink, blind and blunt.
The catastrophic complexity of the human cell, the massive, mutating mystery of the human body!
Reactions gather, like the clouds, and we — fight!
Slash the mass; chem the thing!
Damn it; hack it; slam it; whack it!
Math it; thrash it!
Fearful to have; terrible to witness; excruciating to treat; the clonal bout, the charnel house, the backdoor out.
Acceptance?
Got and not — wrought in snot, clot in thought, chemo-bot and bio-rot.
And yet, but yet — just possibly yet — there is the kind of wild, wonky wonder of life in it all — like foreign travel; mountaineering — sundry bitter-sweet relational distillations, supportive social essences, surprising gratitudes — scents of grace.
And too, perhaps finally — in it all and through it all — those surprisingly bright, blasted blinks at blinding beauty.
Modern Soliloquies & Pastiches 