July 2015
I am not dead yet
but I will be soon.
Maybe tonight,
if I go to sleep at the right moment
at the right time,
I will be able to die in my dreams.
Where all is surreal
and abstract
it means everything
and yet it means nothing.
I am not dead yet
but I will be soon.
Maybe in two weeks,
if I am found cooking in my kitchen
and I mince the mushrooms too quickly,
I will end up cutting off my fingers
and stopping circulation to my heart.
Oh how funny I will look
when the headline reads:
“She faced death like a champignon”
I am not dead yet
but I will be soon.
Maybe in nine months
when I am bringing my offspring
forth into the world,
The earth will run out of land,
and can foster only one more.
Then I will take all of the breaths left within me
and feed them to my child.
I am not dead yet
but I will be soon.
Maybe in five years
when I am writing under thick maples
in an abundance of wild chamomiles,
will the pollen fill my lungs
and I myself will turn into a giant flower.
Swallowed by the soil
into a lush meadow.
I am not dead yet
but I will be soon.
Maybe in twenty years
when I have found the cure for cancer
in a laboratory
I, myself,
will be consumed by the disease,
and collapse with a vial in my hand.
I am not dead yet
but I will be soon.
Maybe in one hundred years
when I am old and gray,
I will lie in a bed of cold sheets
and hospital pillows,
reminiscing at the times I was happiest,
the mountains that I climbed,
the books I published,
the viruses I’ve cured,
And though my body is dying,
and my lungs are not breathing,
and my heart is now slowing
and my blood is not flowing,
the essence of me,
myself, and I.
will always remain.
I am not dead yet.
SAY IT. 