At the snap of the fingers.
I hear me talking, but no one else.
My partner looks at me funny and then, I saw the squint;
amusement transforms into grave concern.
The kite was flying spiral but now in a dead spin and rapid nose dive.
I am crashing.
"Oh my God!, your mouth."
"Can you hear me?"
Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me? Or just my thought?
Arrested at the junction of my brain and the voice box.
"I hear you!" I think the response but, I am arrested.
Sorry dear! So sudden I am not afraid.
I raise my hands like you ask. I always follow your commands.
Your gaze is to my right side but, I have no right side.
I never did.
"Talk to me!" "Say something, for God's sake!"
Really. I hear you. I hear you.
I see the strobes and I hear the shrieking ambulance.
I see the uniformed men and their gurney.
I hear the greetings. No handshake offer and none taken.
More instructions. I hear you but can't do.
Talk to my spouse cum witness cum caregiver cum spokesperson cum patient advocate.
So many caps at the snap of the fingers.
All of equal weight and complexity.
I hope your neck will carry the burdened head.
I hope.
It's the hospital, Goddamnit. I know where 'am at.
Time of the day I know not, ask me again.
Too confused to see I am now a one-side man.
I have no right face.
I have no right arm.
I have no right body.
I have no right leg.
I can't speak my right mouth.
I can't feel my right face.
I can't lift my right hand.
I can't lift my right leg.
I HAVE NO RIGHTS.
It dawns on me.
With no rights, I am screwed.
My mind, what's left of it, is still able to conjure the challenges of my one-side world.
A one-side existence of a half-human.
Utterly dependent; unable and disable.
My spouse cum witness cum caregiver cum spokesperson cum advocate is capped out.
Burdened by my burden.
What bothers the eyes sure bothers the nose.
Love ties our fates.
We are both citizens of the one-side world.
"I am sorry, your HIV test came back positive."
The words beyond the pronouncement just floated by;
mumbles of meaningless accounts. Noise.
For I am no more there. You are talking to a shell of Me.
Me? The shock catapults Me out of my shell.
My breathing, my heart beats, my sweat say I am running.
I am sitting but running too fast to stand up.
"I am sorry." "Hey, there is a lot we can do these days to manage the disease and you can lead a normal life."
Normal?
A wise man tells me, "there is no normal life, there is life."
Life is not normal when the reaper is your tenant.
Sorry. Sorry for what?
No offense taken.
You are the message bearer, doctor.
The message is mine, my load to carry.
Over days, my mind zips forwards to the likelihoods;
What must I do to live.
What must I do to die.
Then, zaps backwards;
What I had done.
Who I had been.
Minds don't go in many directions, bandwidth is limited.
Just two directions.
I say; "I am gonna live!"
I choose life.
I will live for me. I will ignore the daily nods of the reaper.
He's just a tenant and I am the landlord of my soul.
I got this.
I will work with you, doc.
I hope you will work with me.
Hear me when I have a say.
Understand when that say is; "I am tired."
The burden of announced death gets too much to bear, sometimes.
"Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God."
Tell me again.
No. Give me a minute.
Grant me a minute to dwell in my confusion.
A minute for my scrambling mind.
Not to think or process, but to believe this is all a bad dream.
Really, a minute is only good enough to wake from this daymare.
How? Why? Why me? Me.
This is not happening.
I am young in age, body and mentation.
A teetotaler and never into ciggies.
My parents are ripe in age but spry.
How does a little knob in my breast become this?
What happens now doc?
I am terrified. I am. Truly scared.
I am in a sleep desert and food has new look.
My hands have their own minds and constant affinity for the knob.
God knows I finger that thing a thousand times a day.
May be this incessant fiddling will rub it into a figment.
What do we do now, doc?
The clock ticks and there goes the count down.
Or the count up.
My partner stands by. Ready to hold the pendulum.
Ready to swing it in my favor.
For love. For that, I am thankful.
My breasts are Me, so they say.
I am more than my boobs.
I'll trade them to live. I am Me. I am total.
I define me.
My hair is Me, so they say.
I am more than my curls.
I'll be proudly bald to live. I am Me. I am total.
I define Me.
These I know;
To a man, his time.
The sun sets even when it’s not seen.
Let me embrace my sunset on my terms.
My time nears and I yearn for comfort.
It’s all tic-tic-tic and tic now, the toc is edited.
Let me hold on to my tic. It’s all I have left.
Let me have a say in how this chapter is written.
Let me own the representation before the appendix.
For this is my book.
I know you hurt for me. Don’t.
My pain is plain pain.
The kind that’s soothed by a good dose of opium.
Not the pain of the impending end.
I know I’ve come to the end so, It doesn’t hurt.
Options were read out at my diagnosis.
“Few months, give or take,” the doctors say.
No option is good or bad if the outcome is the same.
Do nothing is a darn good option if doing something means undesired deprivation.
I can live, in this case, die with my choice.
At this point, dignity for a few months isn’t a fair trade.
Especially a few months of wrack at that.
You see my point?
Doctors fix.
But, some fixables are best left unfixed.
Sometimes the treatment is not to treat, is what I mean.
That’s if I have a say.
Relieve my pain and leave the tumor be, doc.
Home or nursing home or hospital or hospice center.
I think I have a say here.
My illness may be terminal but my dignity is not.
When the time comes that I’m unable to make that choice,
know that my wants are clear;
comfort and dignity.
I have it. You have it. If you have a head at all, you’ve had it.
Yours is yours. Mine is mine.
I’ll tell you what I have. If only speaking doesn’t hurt so much.
Your words are like hurling shot puts to my head.
Hush that I may have respite.
All I crave is silence and darkness,
I’ll hide in the belly of the fish if I can.
Who needs light when it hurts. Let there be darkness.
Oh, I want to be still too. Real still.
It’s like the throbs dare me to move; “Try and see."
Nooo, I won’t be tempted. The last attempt emptied my gut.
The retching sets off a rapid staccato of shots in my head.
Please don’t make me move.
I always knew it was coming.
“No visitors allowed” sign is useless to the blind.
The headaches are preceded by floaters, ghostly spots of nothing.
Then, Boom! Boom-boom-boom-boom. A unrefereed boxing contest in my head.
How long is this session?
I get extra booms for not reaching for my pill box soon enough.
For ignoring the floaters, I get extra booms.
Sometimes these extras add a scary wither of a side of the body.
God, don’t let this be what I think it’s not. Not stroke, God.
My friend told me of his headache.
“It lasts for three days”, he said.
Three days of "just shoot me in the head, now."
Three days of literal eye-popping, ice pick jabbing headache.
Ouch! Just the thought.
A headache is not a headache.
I’ll trade mine for the “sleep it off” type.
Darkness, silence, real still are in the grave.
Ain’t ready for that house yet.
Thank you for the eventual release though.
Lub-dub-lub-dub-lub-dub-lub-dub.
That’s my kind of rhyme.
I lived with it for decades.
Unnoticeable because of familiarity.
I know it's there because I am here.
Clippity-clop-clippity-clop-clippity-clop-clippity-clop.
An old Western fills my chest, each pound I feel.
Filled ears, filled neck, filled breath and filled extremities.
A tilt to flat threatens spillage. Prop-up, quick.
Prop-up pillow. Prop-up recliner.
Prop Up.
I am breathless with every step and fatigued at meals.
I wake up choking and drowning in the pool inside me.
Foods I like are now funny.
I weigh like a baby grows inside me. The only movements I feel are the unrelenting clippity-clop.
My ticker is eager to pop out of my chest like a champagne cork.
Where is all the air in the world?
I just can’t get my own share of the breaths.
"Don’t drink, avoid salt, talk to me before popping any new pill."
All these I do, where is my breath?
Where is my breath!?
Your medications turn me into a human spigot.
This I am willing to do, just to find my breath.
Funny how a thimble-full of liquid goes into my veins and liters of liquid come out the pisser.
Funny that I will do anything to have what I had but never thought of.
Funny how this works.
Surely and slowly. The weight melts.
My arms, my legs look like mine. Again.
Like the doctor said, "you will pee a lot but you will be able to breathe again."
Pee-a-lot and breathe better. Who could have guessed?
Aah, the human body.
The doctor says a lot but I hear nothing.
"It’s the heart and lung, and the water in the lungs."
Water in the lungs, I see.
"It’s the salt in the soup. It’s the water you drink."
"It’s the pain medication you buy over the counter."
I am like, “what the hell connects all these?” I wondered under my breath.
Maybe a little more clarity will keep me out of the hospital.
Maybe it’s just the nature of my affliction.
Maybe there is no real solution to what ails me.
What is an ace inhibitor? Anything to do with a tennis serve?
What is a beta blocker? Is there a sweeter blocker?
What is a diuretic? Die-what?
A defibrillator. Sure sounds like a good name for a grill.
And all these have to do with my pee and lungs and heart. Really.
I am one of the six million Americans with this affliction and twenty three million worldwide.
I am one of the tens of thousands of deaths a year.
I am the parent, the sibling, the daughter, the son.
I am your neighbor. I am you.
I am tired.
My favorite sleeping position is taken away.
Food I love is forbidden. I run from water, not just rain.
I plot my weights and I pop my handful pills.
Still I can’t find my breath.
It’s a quiet morning.
The kind that makes you ask;
“What can go wrong?”
For months now, exertions put my chest in a tightening vise.
The vise loosens with rest; problem-solution. No worries.
Why worry?
It’s not really painful. Chest pain, you worry.
Chest in a vise? No one tells me what to do with that.
Especially as I find the solution. Rest.
For months now, I feel fine.
Problem-solution, a self-solving cycle.
These days, the tight vise seems to be there always.
Sometimes I swear a man sits on my chest.
Breathing becomes conscious.
I breathe before I catch my breath.
Now I worry.
This morning, the pressure is unbearable.
Whatever it is now has my attention.
It decides this is no joke.
I am trying all positions to feel comfortable.
I curl into a fetal position but, relieve has taken a leave.
I clutch my chest in a futile attempt to loosen the phantom vise.
The harder I clutch, the tighter it gets. I’m doomed.
Today is just not my day. What about this sweat?
Now will be the time to summon the calvary.
A team of saviors waits for my arrival.
My problem-solution cycle lies on the table staring up at the masked figures
hovering over me.
Intervention time!
The cardiologist says something about plumbing in my heart.
A clogged up pipe, something like that.
And that’s the explanation for my impending doom.
Few more hours at home, the ambulance is a hearse.
A hearse for a clogged plumbing. No kidding.
Then comes a mandatory number of pills to keep my plumbing open.
I oblige. There is more.
Exercise, weight loss and diet.
Everything I detest. Damn plumbing.
“You have but one heart," says my spouse.
"I have one mouth too," my reply.
And what it wants, it gets.
What happens to the "an apple a day" crap?
Warmth in all contexts is desirability.
Or not?
Literal one degree north of the normal range is ominous.
I was all the way great this time yesterday.
Unaware of the invasion afoot.
Seems the heat centers are in my joints.
The ache in those areas can only mean one thing;
“we are gonna be hard at work in cooking this body.”
The lava in my veins and tissues sure flow from those ungrateful joints,
bent on destroying our joint home.
The doctors tell me I have a family of bugs.
Invisible-to-naked-eyes bastards with heat pumps strapped to their backs.
Zipping through the body’s highways and non-highways.
They wreak havoc in the body organs and use up resources for sustenance.
I’ll name names if only I can get my mouth around the words.
My body’s idea of a joke is to go into these interspersing periods of
chills and shivers.
Imagine that. Fever and chills;
the attempt to counter the insult turns out to be as insulting.
This rigmarole of homeostasis is a definition of my illness.
Of the human organism. The sick Me.
Comfort eludes me.
The Africans are right; “the one who holds a red hot charcoal may not sit still”.
Food smells nauseous and water tastes ...blaargh.
Every part hurts, even the hairs.
My breathing and heart beats are hurried.
You forsake me, body.
This fever has to break or I will.
The medications seems to take forever.
When in distress, relieve at sight is always too far off.
I want a break. Now.
A break I hope will take.
Eventually the sweat seems to be doing what sweat does;
put out the fire,… the fever.
The broken fever was pushed farther away by a craved sleep.
The break took.
Alas there are hard-to-name antibugs to those invisible-to-naked-eyes bugs with names
I can’t say.
Remedies to rip off their heat pumps and then go for the kill.
The break took.
I am not sick.
The life that grows inside me detests the contents of the guts.
Whatever is in the neighboring sack irritates her.
She calls the shots, I am just the vessel.
She doesn’t like it, I puke it.
My sacrifice begins the day my monthly bleeds stop.
For her, I will give till death.
Darn right a woman’s work is never done.
In propitiation I give a piece of me to this budding life.
The sacrifice of motherhood.
The gravid belly.
The swellings, the stripes, the cravings.
The dirt I eat to puke in the morning.
The hurting back exerted by the ever-bulging middle.
The wine and merry I forego.
Nine months is forever.
It’s a long time if there is a count down.
I wonder if I will ever return from this journey.
I look at my mother’s pictures over the years.
I saw the before the children and the after.
We took a toll.
“The glow of pregnancy suits you," my friend says.
I do hope the glow sticks.
Whatever sags sags.
It is not all for naught.
It’s a trade for a human after all.
A human!
I remember the ultrasound pictures.
“Hello baby!," I screamed.
I am duplicating.
The Yorubas say; “having a child is how you cheat death.”
I am immortal. I am a mother.
The moment following the pain of childbirth is …
A wrapper of euphoria draping a mix of love, anxiety, and more speckles of joy.
The exclusivity of being a woman.
Being a mother.
I cry and laugh when I hear that first cry.
I see her and then I feel her.
Skin to skin, I shiver in awe.
Welcome. You are welcome.
I am a mother!
Hello baby.
I miss your playful little fetal kicks.
I relish the tales of pregnancy.
I revel in your gaze as you suckle.
I chuckle to your toothless grins.
*Mutua ba maganin.
This is to death, the finality that is a transition.
This is to death, the happenstance of life.
There is life and there is death, not parallel but both in one.
For everyday lived is everyday dying.
*Iku o loogun.
Birth is predictable and a maybe.
Man meets woman and then, consent and conception.
In nine months, life. Or not.
It’s as predictable as unsure as unlike death.
*Onwu enweghi ogwu.
Death is not unsure.
Like the sunset heralds the night and beginning of a new day,
death is the transition to beyond.
Storied, unseen and unknown but sure.
Go forth and gone.
A destination without a postal service.
You know not, I know not.
Our forebears have no descriptions to share.
Transition is complete, it is that.
To the sick and dying,
put a smile on it.
Play your hand courageously.
Like death, illness and dying are all same fabric.
Face life but don’t turn your back on death.