It's genetics, 
and it's 
environment.
It's meningitis, glandular fever
and the novel coronavirus.
It's bad habits catching up 
with me. 
It's poison dust and GM foods
and leaded petrol. 
It's stress-induced.
It's karmic irony.
It's my sense of foreshortened future 
made manifest.
It's a new way of self-harming 
on a cellular level. 
It's punishment from a god
I don't believe in.
It's the universe replying it 
doesn't care.
It's
dumb
*******
luck.

There's a million different 
(equally plausible, equally irrelevant) 
reasons.
None of them change anything.

The mind so powerful
I wish it not to
wash me away
as though I were
Algae
along the shore
Journey'd to the sand
only to be
scooped up, ****** and tossed
right back into the
watery world

My kitchen is yellow
Ugly and faded
My kitchen is where
Late at night
I traded
Crumbs with a monster
A tiny little thing
That grows and grows
With growls and grumblings
She does not like the yellow
And neither say do I
Sometimes the hideous color
Makes her want to cry
So I placate her with cookies
Brownies and more
But my little monster
Throws tantrums on the floor
No amount of Nutella
Can get her off her knees
For my little monster
Has a minds disease
And I’m too busy fighting
That I can not see
The empty cartons of ice cream
Will bring her no true ease

The defects themselves are not as bad
as the memories of the time
when I didn't have them, but

well, if that is all
(it is not, time after time)

Yet I wonder if
and where there is a limit
where I no longer want to go on

there's still só much I want:
see flowers and release balloons
around the world to touch

people with a caress
of soft thoughts and
moments of peace

Space, ease, myself
breathing, feeling the stitches
under my ribs and the poison
in my body, in my head

Not thinking about that
Every day a friend
who cares
about her own interests

No curiosity, patronising
and consolation, only
an embrace and
being spoiled a bit

Awake, not dreaming
in my sleep, walking around
in the colours of the world
and eating roasted peanuts

in the park, the park
always a park
a forest, a **** or a beach
and otherwise my balcony

Not the war makes the warrior
but his peace
with the ending

....My gates are open
....energy is flowing in
....my face shines from it

....I live, I don't distract you
....with golden hair, I am
....life, bald and unadorned

Not: I survive with hope
but with inner peace
with the ending

....I don't leave me
....I don't withdraw
....in pain and sorrow

....I let life flow in and out
....I'm standing in the light
....in which we find each other

I am not here as a sick person
but in my hard-fought peace
with the ending

....My chest breathes up and down
....my dear body hurts
....I radiate it

....With hot water I wash
....off flakes and sighs
....and I stretch out, cautiously