Fading Out

The light above you is flickering fluorescent rhythms on your head

The doctor’s gray hair and deep, wrinkled eyes give you a feeling

Of hope and trust. He pulls out diagrams of your anatomy and points

To the parts that are living death,

The parts they will pry from your collapsing chest.

The doctor can tell you what it takes to live,

But his somber stare

Falls to the floor when you ask,

“What is it like to die?”

I was in the car when you called and

I told you what they ripped from me

I tried to make it easy. I said the fight is not all in your fists

It is in your will and your soul and your guts

I told you to wake up each day with faith and to be

The person you and I always wished you’d be

I said, “Try it. Nothing will take away your courage; your mind;

Your you.”

I said all that in the spaces between silences and sobs. It is not

In our nature to cry, especially not to each other.

I said all that while in a daze.

I thought later, that what I meant to say was, “It’s like a swarm of a million

Black bees, aiming their death upon the body; your city.”

Then later after they took your lung, and shortly before God

Reclaimed your body; There was the last call.

I was in a dusty, downtown apartment and you were prone

In that hospital bed they moved into the house a half a country away.

And you spoke through oxygen tubes with what was left of your mind.

You were fading out over the telephone. You

Managed to breathe softly to me, “Son.

You were wrong. There is nothing Cancer Can’t take From you.”