Sometimes,
I just wanna leave
everything and everyone
Just to see who'll find me
In the crowd of thousands
Will ever someone actually
be bothered about my absence
I wanna sit back and watch

-   SASR

“Are you okay?”,
my wife asks
when I cough.

“No. I’m fine.
Yes. I’m not”,
I respond,

stumping her
in the poetic irony
of words that

encompass the
yes and no
and the in between.

She flips the finger
at me and I return
the bird to the nest.

We go back to our life
and our tablets,
the drip, drip of my chemo
and I wonder about okay.

“No.  You’re fine.
Yes. You’re not.”,
the bag stares in response.

My periods turn to semicolons
My suicide notes to poetry
My goodbyes became hellos
The blades turn to sunflowers
And the bullets, a rose
My heart still is broken
But the pieces have been found
Death isn’t for me anymore
What is, in the here and now
I still don’t feel enough
But I am alive
And that’s enough to say
Today is not the day I die.