In the several years I have been away from this blog, my life has changed completely. I no longer teach yoga and am now a full time caregiver to my son with late stage Lyme disease. I am restarting this blog as part of a 30 day Writing through Grief project. I will be posting some of my writing and poetry as part of the program. I am looking forward to writing consistently again as it is incredibly healing and empowering for me, and helps me hear my inner self speak. I always learn so much about myself and life when I write.
Here is a poem I wrote recently about my son’s weekly IV treatments, and hanging out at the clinic with the other patients. The clinic where my son goes for treatment primarily treats cancer patients.
Infusion day
There is no way to look bad ass
under these faultering
flickering lights
that cast my face in a pale shade of green.
Beauty is beside the point here.
We all look ghoulish, just one step away from undone,
even the ones who sport straight white teeth and spray tans.
I did not invite these people to my disease.
I did not send out invitations to their failing parts-
this one a kidney, that one a pancreas, that other one a lung.
Such odd company to keep,
a brotherhood of bodies
that have betrayed each of us
in ways too intimate to speak of.
We exchange nods and knowing looks
as the needles push in
breaching the thinnest barriers of skin,
the penetration so public,
exposing small ropes of blue and green snaking their way up arms
and around hands.
In the bright red container
where the used needles go
the DNA mingles and merges in random ways
Here, the staff might say to us , this is as close as it will ever get to sex.
We size up each other’s chances and
mark time as the hours chase one other around the clock,
making small talk awkward
as any one night stand,
speed dating for the terminal.