Poetry With Hart

It’s the waiting that kills you.

We should be thankful.
This time they caught it early,
as if a life sentence has
any other way of running out.

We should be thankful
that she fell in the shower
the crack of sudden vision loss in the steam,
keep the chipped tile as a good luck charm
since they found the tumor again int he MRI.

We should be thankful
that this time she wants to fight it
for the sake of her young kids.
Chemo, surgery, chemo, rinse, repeat
because there will come a day when she won’t.

We should be thankful
that over thirty years of friendship,
the shared experiences and parallel dreaming
have prepared us for any battle
and cultivated a morbid sense of humor.

We should be thankful
that they make funny t-shirts
like “my brain tumor made me do it”
and “I have a brain tumor, I’m allowed to do weird things!”
to mask the pain behind the laughter.

We should be thankful
for everyday we still have together,
call it YOLO summer, get tattoos,
sing all of our favorite songs out car windows
forget out mortality in the sun.

We should be thankful
to have so much advanced notice
to overthink the eulogy the invite list,
the seating arrangement and change
the flower arrangements twenty times.

We should be thankful,
but I find it hard to be anything at all.
All I want to do is scream
till my voice runs out.

It’s the waiting that’s killing us.