Post Chemo

Sometimes it’s easy to disappear

Yesterday you dyed your hair. Now you’re painting your toes.

You run your fingers through the flames until the mirror catches fire.

You stare at your feet and watch poppies bloom across linoleum.

Once, on the way home from a place you don’t remember

the road rose and went on rising. It twisted and turned

and spun you too dizzy to think. That’s when the forest fell away

all at once as you skidded toward the edge

of an unbroken blackness. Sometimes it’s easy to disappear.

Sometimes the beginning of disaster curves out of nowhere.

When life flattens out again you sip coffee and skip past familiar songs,

your almost death dissolving behind you.

Originally published in Rogue Agent

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