The port rests on my high right chest, a pink crater,
a  cleanly folded linen shroud kissed with tears
wheeled from operating room to recovery  
by melting folds of scrub blues with iodoform scents.

The fragrance of me is creased into a tucked blanket,
monitors on my legs and arm caressing rhythmic,
sounds dissolving into the hum left in a plastic wind-
wafting hints of my odorless crenulated alchemical cure.

My wife holds the origami of my old self in a
blue zip lock hospital bag that opens with a
singe of nitrate, the final aroma of good cooked food
settling on a rack then vanishing into a memory portal.

I smell no future,  just the staleness of hope and fear
as I uncrease myself into my clothes and stand unfolded
at the exit, in the threshold of a shadowless sunlight
whose sleeves I sniff for the blossoming plum tree.

I can’t go in.
The smell of medicine that isn’t working,
Desperately masked by overwhelming sanitizer that stings my nose as I inhale.
No sunlight makes its way through the windows.
It fails to even reach through the clouds.

I haven’t seen blue skies in months.
I’m cold, clammy from the perpetual rain conspiring with a nervous sweat.

This room is too big.
Too big and only four people sitting around the same coffee table.
There are four people, but no one makes eye contact --
They try to hide a fear they never expected.

I stare ahead at the doors.
The doors I simultaneously crave and dread opening,
Is ignorance torture of bliss?

Why am I out here?
Why aren’t I in her room?
I know she’s in pain, why can’t anyone help her?
Is she dying?
What if she’s dying?
What if she’s dying all alone?
What if she’s dying surrounded by strangers with medical degrees?
What if she’d prefer that I’m not there?
What if I exhaust her, bother her, multiply her suffering?
What if she doesn’t recognise me when I go in?
What if her hearts beating and her eyes are blinking, but she’s not there?

What if I never get to see my mom again?

To smell her perfume,
Hear her voice, her laugh,
Touch her skin.
Feel her soft hand holding mine,
Feel her arms around me as she holds me close
Keeping out any monsters that could poison my mind.

Those monsters don’t scare me anymore.
My fear comes from sitting in an empty house that’s no longer a home.
My fear is knowing without you, I’ll never be at home.
My fear is the thought that you died resenting your daughter
Who never took the chance to say goodbye.
My fear is that on those days where the sky is gray, my eyes are tired, my ears don’t want any more music, food tastes like sawdust, I can’t get up from my bed, and my heart feels gray, that I won’t bounce back, my soul will be consumed by the emptiness caused by your absence.
My fear is every morning waking up. The feeling that you’re gone, and there’s nothing I can do to ever see you again.

Don't touch me, I strike
fire from my unshed tears
for the tentacles in my belly
I scorch every hand
(including mine)

Don't touch me, my skin
is tight around the old wounds
hardened to an abrasive armour
against what nobody should do
(and yet it happened)

Don't touch me, my belly
does not tolerate any pressure
on the serous membrane around
the spines on the wounds of lust
(of men for me)

Don't touch me, I cry
out the invasive past
from my body for new
cells that know nothing
(virginally)

I am facing grief
I can see her standing not far off
calmly waiting

I won't look down
or avert my gaze
I dare her to look away first
My teeth are clenched but I won't let her know
And my fists may shake
and my eyes may burn
but I will stand my ground
when she finally walks my way

For many years, you were our family's breadwinner.
Your money paid for our breakfasts, lunches and dinners.
Because of my mental impairment, you continued to support me after I turned eighteen.
You could've outworked two twenty year olds, you were the hardest worker I've ever seen.
After twenty months of chemotherapy, you lost your fight.
Your battle with Leukemia ended six years ago tonight.
For the last two days of your life, you couldn't even reply to what people said.
When I received a call from my sister-in-law, she informed me that you were dead.
Your existence on Earth ended at around 10:20 PM.
One day I'll go to Heaven and I will see you again.

There are so many kids dying of cancer,
And I'm here dragging a blade through my skin.
Life is so unfair,
Why can't I just die instead of them?

I was fifteen years old.

Holding your heartbeat between my hands,
watching wrists restrained to wires,
attached to monitors reading your chest.
As the child, I did not want my mother to leave me,
but instead, I chose not to leave you.
There was not any time left to admire
the natural color of your hair showing through,
stealing a final glance at your emerald eyes.
When the overcast of death held you firmly,
I find myself loathing what it is capable of.
Only in a hospital gown,
were you swept off your feet.

Death’s arms pulled at what piece
of you I still cradled,
reminiscent to the time I held
a bird with a broken wing,
helpless.
I tried to put it back into the nest,
but the mother rejected it.
Your body rejected medicine
the same way.

I have no taste for whiskey,
although it seems over the years
I have developed a proclivity for cancer,
for building the nacre into  pearl.  

It’s funny how one can live with death
scooted to the borders, listening to it
rap the door with sub-audible gusts
that only your dog hears and barks at.

The holy trinity, my wife calls it,
three masses on the left, right,
concluding down in a ****** triangle,
a parasite, a dark natural beauty of my years.

The bad genes of my parents play out their divorce
in my body, diabetes and cancer
fighting for the claim to death’s victory,
my only peace being to cut them both out.

The Great Physician puts my cure
in the hands of fallible demigods,
whose inclination is to bury hope in the
condolences of the other well-intentioned masses.

“It’s great that you feel no pain,
Your color looks good today,” they echo
as the pallid tv weatherman I met
in ruddy years on the brown river shuffles by.

The nacre of the cancer ward-
an open shirt skeleton on oxygen,
two old black men  talking loudly
about seasons of diagnosis and mistreatment,

just waiting, waiting, waiting to get better
caws at me as I make my way
to the reception table just bright enough
to not seem an open casket.

My wife fills out three pages asking
for family obituaries while I answer
on a tablet forty questions about death,
five about life, two about insurance.

I wait in quiet sitting in a clinical green chair
Listening  for my name to be called,
thinking not about the culled pearl
but the beautiful oyster thrown way.