Some people leave graduation
with shining speeches about ambition,
with plans to “find themselves”
in cities their parents can afford
to let them wander through.
Some will climb mountains
just to watch the sunrise from somewhere higher,
swim in distant beaches,
collecting photographs and stories
as if life stretches endlessly ahead of them
They speak so casually about the future,
as if time were something guaranteed.
As if growing old were a birthright
instead of a privilege.
Me?
I am preparing résumés and curriculum vitae
so I can earn enough to pay for my own funeral.
Applying for work to earn money
I will only be spending posthumously.
People love saying
“you cannot use your fortune after death.”
That is not true.
Why?
Because I am already exhausting mine just to die presentably,
inside a decent coffin, with wreaths of flowers arranged just right,
Floor candelabras casting their practiced glow,
enough arroz caldo, coffee, juice, and snacks
to keep guests comfortably distracted
from the fact that I am not.
Buried in land my family owns,
with bands playing my favorite song,
as if sound could soften my silence
or rhythm could negotiate with my absence,
so at the very least
My death can look more dignified
than the life cancer left me with,
as if presentation could ever be
a kind of mercy.
The doctors already said it plainly--
terminal.
Two to three years, if I am lucky.
Funny, isn’t it?
Most people my age are terrified
of wasting their twenties,
while mine are already being measured
in scan results and treatment cycles.
While they chase promotions,
apartments, weddings, childrens, retirement funds,
I calculate medication costs,
hospital bills,
and how much dying politely will cost my family.
What a ridiculous joke this is, haha,
to survive long enough to graduate
only to discover my adulthood
will be spent bargaining with cancer.
Chemo for life, they say,
like it is a reasonable thing to ask
of someone barely beginning theirs.
They call it “fighting.”
As if poison dripping into my veins forever
is something noble.
And still, the world insists
this is what “planning ahead” looks like.
As if survival were optional,
and dying were just another budget line.
So I continue as expected.
Sending applications,
answering polite rejections,
filling calendars that assume a future
I have already been told not to rely on.
And if there is any final cruelty left to name,
it is this.
That I did not run out of time.
It is that time ran out on me
and still demanded payment in full.