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Andrea Gibson is onstage telling us about the tumor and the calendar the doctor slipped into their chest like a final love letter: two years. Two. Years. I call it a kind of gift. not the cancer, never the cancer, but the clock you can finally hear ticking loud enough to drown out every stupid apology you were making for your own life. What a gift. If we could all be so lucky. Not lucky to have our cells rebel, our bodies burn, but to be handed the map with the edge of the world circled in red ink. To know with a kind of burning certainty that our days are numbered and the counting has already begun. What a gift. Because all of us have an ending drafted in the dark. We know this, but we keep stacking boxes in the basement to store our fear in, keep erecting excuses between ourselves and the truth. When does time become sharp enough to cut through the denial? A month? You’d feel that blade. A year? You’d start carving your name into every sunrise. Five years? Ten? At what distance do you stop believing the train is really coming? Our time here is limited. Still, we scroll, we postpone, we let the edge of loss skim past our skin a missing, like a hawk above we refuse to look up at, circling the prairie of our days, waiting to be noticed. The gift is not the sickness. The gift is the knowing. Sensing. Feeling the countdown in your bones. Living with the coming end until every ordinary moment turns sharp enough to cut open into joy. So let me ask you: What would you do if you knew, absolutely knew that your time on earth was ending in five years? Who would you love? What would you throw away? What would you finally say out loud? What a gift. Here it is, in your hands. Open it. Accept it. It was always yours.
0
Nov 23, 2025
Nov 23, 2025 at 1:16 PM UTC
PoetryIsCheating
What a Gift
Andrea Gibson is onstage telling us about the tumor and the calendar the doctor slipped into their chest like a final love letter: two years. Two. Years. I call it a kind of gift. not the cancer, never the cancer, but the clock you can finally hear ticking loud enough to drown out every stupid apology you were making for your own life. What a gift. If we could all be so lucky. Not lucky to have our cells rebel, our bodies burn, but to be handed the map with the edge of the world circled in red ink. To know with a kind of burning certainty that our days are numbered and the counting has already begun. What a gift. Because all of us have an ending drafted in the dark. We know this, but we keep stacking boxes in the basement to store our fear in, keep erecting excuses between ourselves and the truth. When does time become sharp enough to cut through the denial? A month? You’d feel that blade. A year? You’d start carving your name into every sunrise. Five years? Ten? At what distance do you stop believing the train is really coming? Our time here is limited. Still, we scroll, we postpone, we let the edge of loss skim past our skin a missing, like a hawk above we refuse to look up at, circling the prairie of our days, waiting to be noticed. The gift is not the sickness. The gift is the knowing. Sensing. Feeling the countdown in your bones. Living with the coming end until every ordinary moment turns sharp enough to cut open into joy. So let me ask you: What would you do if you knew, absolutely knew that your time on earth was ending in five years? Who would you love? What would you throw away? What would you finally say out loud? What a gift. Here it is, in your hands. Open it. Accept it. It was always yours.
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They told Andrea Gibson she had cancer, two years. it was in one of those rooms, the charts, the too straight smiles, the cheap ceiling tiles yellowing like old teeth, the stink of bleach and plastic trying to wipe the whole thing clean. everybody calls it tragedy. sure. they are not wrong. but there is another word for it. a gift. numbers burning on the wall like a motel sign you finally notice at four in the morning. most people go their whole lives pretending the clock is just a rumor. they drink at it, work at it, scroll at it, **** at it, but they never look. if we were lucky, we would not get the cancer. no. we would just get the truth. a voice that does not sugar anything: listen, this is all you have and it is not much. it is leaking away right now while you stand there lying to yourself about how later will be different. you know you are dying. of course you do. you are not stupid. you just haul that fact up the ladder into the attic with the Christmas junk and the jeans from ten years ago you swear you will fit again. when does time finally get under your skin? a month left? fine, you shake and scream. a year? you write a list, lose it in a drawer. five years, ten? you shrug, crack another beer, tell the kid inside your head we start tomorrow. out the window there is always a hawk or something like it, sharp-eyed, circling, patient as a landlord. call it loss. call it the end. call it the thing that has been waiting since you were born. you stare at the floor, the fridge light, your phone. you look everywhere but up. the real gift is ugly and it is simple: you remember you are temporary. you feel it in your back teeth. you wake up and the coffee hits harder, the air has a bite to it, the grocery store aisle looks like holy ground for half a second. then the question walks in, sits across from you like an old dog that knows your name: what would you do if you knew you were gone in five years? no angels show up. no preacher. no soft piano. all you get is a calendar, cheap paper, a pen that skips, and the guts to look straight at it. that is the gift. they hand it to you, wrapped in bad news. tear the paper off. take it. try, for once, to live like you know you do not stay. live like the hawk already has your name.
0
Nov 23, 2025
Nov 23, 2025 at 1:32 PM UTC
PoetryIsCheating
What a Gift (version 2)
They told Andrea Gibson she had cancer, two years. it was in one of those rooms, the charts, the too straight smiles, the cheap ceiling tiles yellowing like old teeth, the stink of bleach and plastic trying to wipe the whole thing clean. everybody calls it tragedy. sure. they are not wrong. but there is another word for it. a gift. numbers burning on the wall like a motel sign you finally notice at four in the morning. most people go their whole lives pretending the clock is just a rumor. they drink at it, work at it, scroll at it, **** at it, but they never look. if we were lucky, we would not get the cancer. no. we would just get the truth. a voice that does not sugar anything: listen, this is all you have and it is not much. it is leaking away right now while you stand there lying to yourself about how later will be different. you know you are dying. of course you do. you are not stupid. you just haul that fact up the ladder into the attic with the Christmas junk and the jeans from ten years ago you swear you will fit again. when does time finally get under your skin? a month left? fine, you shake and scream. a year? you write a list, lose it in a drawer. five years, ten? you shrug, crack another beer, tell the kid inside your head we start tomorrow. out the window there is always a hawk or something like it, sharp-eyed, circling, patient as a landlord. call it loss. call it the end. call it the thing that has been waiting since you were born. you stare at the floor, the fridge light, your phone. you look everywhere but up. the real gift is ugly and it is simple: you remember you are temporary. you feel it in your back teeth. you wake up and the coffee hits harder, the air has a bite to it, the grocery store aisle looks like holy ground for half a second. then the question walks in, sits across from you like an old dog that knows your name: what would you do if you knew you were gone in five years? no angels show up. no preacher. no soft piano. all you get is a calendar, cheap paper, a pen that skips, and the guts to look straight at it. that is the gift. they hand it to you, wrapped in bad news. tear the paper off. take it. try, for once, to live like you know you do not stay. live like the hawk already has your name.
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