Cancer

you are in your school, sitting in class
next to the annoying boy who
won’t stop talking to you.

the teacher is your grandfather who
died three years ago of cancer while you watched,
and his bones stick out through his
corduroy britches and
his flesh is tight to his skull,
hanging and sunken,
and bits melt off as
he moves his mouth like speech
but nothing comes out.

the annoying boy next to you
melts into your mother,
and you are in the home you lived in as a child
and your grandfather is there again,
alive and well,
and so is your father and your brother and
your little sister, Lauren.

things are bright and sunny and yellow
but then the police show up -
but it’s not the real police,
it’s the police that give you cancer,
and then the scene isn’t yellow anymore as
everyone screams and the two policemen
attack your father and
break his bones and laugh and grunt as they
stab him with too many needles full of
morphine and who knows what other drugs
and your grandfather just sits there and cries,
and doesn’t do anything to help because
he’s already dead.

and when they leave, you are shaking, shaking,
with your sister and your brother, seeing the broken mess that
your father has become,
and your mother who had vanished from the kitchen and
didn’t return.

and then you are at the playground, for some reason,
and you are passing a bright green ball around
and everyone is singing a childish tune
but there are no teachers in sight
and the song is different,
and when you look again, the ball is
your own head and
you run and run and run and run,
screaming,
until you can’t run anymore.

and then you’re in the hospital
and everything stops.

there’s no noise aside from your heartbeat
not even your footsteps make a sound,
and that’s when you realize that you’re walking towards
your father’s hospital room.

you don’t want to go
but you can’t stop your feet
and as much as you fight and bite and kick and claw
you can’t stop moving forward,
a slow, steady march
to death.

And as much as you scream and cry and moan
there is no sound
only that of a steady heartbeat that gets less and less
human
and more and more robotic as
you get closer to the room,
until,
you’re standing right outside of it
and all you hear is the now entirely electronic heartbeat beating two times, four times faster than yours
and you’re breathing way too fast but you can’t hear anything and
you feel like collapsing but you’re just standing rigid and the heartbeat gets louder and louder and faster and faster until suddenly
it stops.

and then the foster mother who owns the house you’re living in
bursts through the door and turns on the light and
you sit up sweating, shaking,
hearing someone screaming and crying and realizing after a moment
that it’s you,
and you just sob uncontrollably as this kind woman who isn’t your mother
tries to comfort you and take the pain away.

but even as she holds you and rocks you
all you can concentrate on is that dream-
the flashes of skin melting off grandpa’s face
needles in dad’s arms
the sound of the electronic heartbeat
the loss of control, the inability to move-
and these images confuse themselves with memories
and you realize that nothing,
nothing will ever be the same again
and there’s nothing left to feel but
pain

and there is no end.