an ode to the dying

I lay on the floor
because it is all
I can do. It is all
I can do to be alive.

My grandmother lays
in the bed, it is not
her bed. It is just
a bed. A temporary place
somewhere between living
and dying. It is the ICU.

I would like to believe
that she is too young
to die. But she has done
so much living, and she
has seen so much dying.

Husband, son, sister,
brother. But it is not
her time yet. It does not
have to be her time yet.

So I lay, on the floor,
and I feel my heart beat,
I feel my flesh on my bones
and I am alive, so I shall do
everything I can to live
in the days that are mine.




Maybe this is nothing. Maybe it's just some silly words, strung together with too many line breaks. But I am going to New York on Saturday morning to see my grandmother, to see with my own two eyes how much she has aged, so I can feel my own emotions, not just the ones that my relatives pass on to me through the phone. I am going to be there for my all my relatives, regardless of how they have chosen to cope with this. I am going even though I know it will wreck me. I am going to go and be strong for them, and bring hope that only an outsider can bring. Because they need me. Because I'm outsider, but not a stranger. I am going because they are my flesh and my blood. I am going because I am scared. I am going because I also need them.
I can hardly believe that I am actually putting these thoughts into words because I know that later I will be embarrased that I did. I will want to take them back, polish them up and squirrel them away in a journal somewhere for someone to find when I die. But for some reason I think that I am being called to live and this is just part of it. Because on friday nights, I go out, and I see the girls dancing, and I see that they are living out loud, not just hiding against the wall, and I am jealous of them, of their dancing, of their freedom. And I yearn to be that free.
I'll try not to worry about the fact that when you read this you may feel that you don't know what to say. Because that's the response that I have gotten for most of my life. When my parents remarried and abandoned me, no one knew what to say. And eventually I grew tired of saying anything at all. I am tired of letting the silence of other's force me into silence. And one day I will figure out how to turn all that into something poetic. And maybe I should have broken this down into smaller, easier to swallow pieces, but instead I put it all out there and so here it is.