One Day at a Time

For years

I groomed my children

To be sensitive

Well-behaved,

To be like the kind of person

I'd love to be.

 

When they graduated, Hidden joys brightened into tears o'er flesh

Minted in my heart,

Flowing unevenly from years of delayed emotion:

those precious jewels

were made to disappear quickly.

 

I went home;

I felt empty and I prayed to God.

 

Days later,

I discovered I had cancer.

I could not even pronounce the name.

Was it for some explicit sin

That I had gotten this nameless thing?

 

I told myself that I had gotten "Cancun:"

That there was this island growing inside of me

That had been growing and growing.

It's just that I wanted to kill this island

Because

It was killing me.

Like an alien inhabiting my body, I just

wanted it OUT AND OUT!

 

The transformation

was

something I could not have foreseen -- 

I became genderless, bald,

Spiteful as ever

with a deep, unending anger against you.

 

Sometimes I felt like throwing up

my whole self.

 

I cursed you til I could not go on,

until I finally could see that you were Right

in not making the world mine.

 

I entered the Church again.

I prayed.