counteachbreath

I stretch out old age like a fitted sheet.

It has blanketed me since my twenties.

Thats when doctors' ears free float

away from you as in a surrealist's painting...

Their eyes bubble, droop and melt into

their textbooks again...

#counteachbreath #earlyosteoarthritis #undiagnosed autoimmune disease

The day

I thought I was dying

I decided

to carefully fold up my somedays,

keep them tucked in a trunk

in a cobweb-laced corner of a dark attic-

The kind of place where you

put things unfinished-

things that were never meant to be.

The day

I thought I was dying

I tried

to tug tightly closed divine doors open,

searched the web but couldn’t see myself,

felt Dylan’s judgmental gaze burned into my back.

I knew what he thought of weary me,

accepting fatigue, wrapped in that ‘good night’

like a blanket, too afraid to rage.

The day

I thought I was dying

I chose

someone to haunt – not to scare,

someone to follow and leave

whispers like little gifts.

I’d be his cool breeze and his

‘something told me.’ The song

incessantly singing in his head.

The day

I thought I was dying

I searched

for a bucket to hold my ‘will-dos.’

Tears formed and fell like wasted time,

clocks melted and slid off my cheeks,

streaming into shaky hands.

My mind flipped through mental pictures

of my boys, and the man who

may not be Mother enough for them.

I raged.

I finally raged.

Firelight dances on the wick, but never ceases to burn.

#Poetry #counteachbreath