A haunting
I've wasted away.
These years,
these last few years where there was just
a whisper left in my ovaries -
a chance, some life, at least.
And now I get ads for experimental
treatments for those who waited too long
to procrastinate.
I've lost time now
I've wasted
these years -
watched as life went on
and I might as well have moved or died.
Neither would have mattered,
most
would not have noticed.
Life goes on, and
we forget
about each other,
about those not in our direct
sight line, text thread, office cubby.
We forget
while
I live in a world that messages to me that
my life doesn't matter.
It is not of value,
it is not worth saving
or protecting
or caring about.
And it's everyone. Those who claim to be
my closest allies contribute to this world
that is hostile
unwelcome
unsafe
dangerous.
But,
we must
go on, move on, get over it
get on with it.
I have the artwork of two dead women on
my walls.
I think of them often - I say their name as
I study the work - their fingerprints mapped
in oil and thread.
Cancer. Overdose. Gone.
And I try to hold their memories,
the times we had long conversations,
short chats,
the brightness in their eyes when they
spoke of their children or laughed at their
idiot friends.
And life went on,
it does that.
Wasted
How do I tell you that you should care
about me?
My neighbor, the others?
How do I keep watching my peers die
while you have casual lunch
go to shows, meet friends for drinks,
take a vacation?
All as though we aren't dying.
All as though we aren't here.
Do you see how you've made it worse?
You look at yourself differently than me -
better, safer, stronger, in the clear.
You hold me - and those like me - at a far
away distance - a blur - we are
barely human
to you. You've measured it,
and your convenience weighs more than
my life.
How do I live in that world?
Live long enough and you too can join me
in the grieving of the forgotten.
There is a quiet in fast-forwarding into the
after you. It feels like waking sleep - like
lucid dreaming - a suspension where
you watch as others go on after you've
disappeared.
I've been living in that place.
A ghost -
haunting the halls of my house
trapped between worlds, screaming
out to a nothing,
to no one.
The significance is crushing.
It goes on,
life.
Grocery stores and arcade games,
trips to France and brunch with too much champagne,
concerts and bowling alleys, dance parties that begin at 2 AM, staying up way too late
watching silly shows about silly things laughing
at the lives barreling across your tv screen.
They go on. They move on. And you
become a distant memory.
Maybe flashes from time to time from a photo or a dream
that trigger
that you too were once a person.
But you are wasted now.
Wasted to
a living memory.
Are we all this insignificant?
Selfish? Lost?
Plants left unwatered will wilt.
Will shrivel
will harden
will expire.
And then,
we get a new plant
or we won't.
And we'll look back at Polaroids on the
fridge of our first house plant, empty pots
with water lines stained, bags of potting
soil spilled onto the cabinet floors -
fragments.
Life as a houseplant
unwatered.
These years
I've wasted away,
these last few years
when
there was just a whisper.