Member Poem

When you come to the end of your rope,
tie a knot and hang on. — FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
 
I put her fluffy teddy bear down, on the grass. I
look at her tiny frame, racked with fresh agony, and
read her final desires from her innocent fingers.
 
She’s dying inside. But the pain shrinks to the size
of the shiny shell near us. And her joy swells
into a thousand whales. I know she doesn’t want to be
just a smiling bald child, surrounded by Santas, by actors,
by celebrities. She’s a plucky princess who
won’t let this awful disease have her.
She’s a warrior – maybe stronger than all of us, combined.
 
I hug her on the bright beach, like a handcuff tight
around a wrist it doesn’t want to abandon, with
the key lost in an ocean blacker than despair.
I watch her little hands bury in the wet sand,
her laughter rising and flirting with the clouds.
We are like ghosts that have met after long;
I couldn’t recognize this bliss.
 
I couldn’t recognize the one who has been writhing
and screaming in the hospital. I couldn’t recognize
the little angel whose blood vessels were so visible
under her skin, with a lonesome tear on her cheek, with
her body so rigid. I couldn’t recognize the one pushing me
away whilst she rode out hell all alone.
 
A minute later she tells me she wants to touch
the sky and fly a last time over the large lagoon to see–
saw on the warm horizon with me.
Will you come, she asks.
Of course I will, my angel. Always.
 
We then sit down to make our statues with sand.
I make hers. She makes mine. Her statue resembles
the real me. My statue resembles the real her.
We sleep, cuddling, basking in the hissing sea breeze.
I know she’s not slipping away quietly. She’s going fast.
 
The sun dips into the calm water; orange and
blue hug each other, like an octopus wrapped around
a man it wants to kill. A leaf lands on her teddy bear.
 
Suddenly, I see her statue going to swim in the exhausted
waves, towards something unknown, while mine
stays eternally dead, watching with puffy eyes.