Divisions
I see the world in divisions.
Ends and beginnings. Clean lines.
The fence row marks where my yard stops
and someone else’s starts.
She tells me about her friend’s mother.
Cancer, maybe. They don’t know yet.
I ask what kind, what stage.
She asks why that’s all I can say.
I don’t understand the question.
There’s no information. No data.
The conversation reached its end
three sentences ago
and I can’t figure out why
it’s still going, or why
she’s getting louder.
I try to explain.
I barely know this person.
I don’t know her mother.
The cancer is unconfirmed,
the origin unknown, the prognosis empty.
If I had five minutes of compassion
for every unknown illness
in every stranger’s body,
there wouldn’t be enough hours
in the day.
She tells me to shut up.
I can’t stop, though.
This division hasn’t reached its end.
No conclusion yet.
There’s always an end.
I offer the couch. I offer a card.
I offer to look things up
when there’s something to look up.
She stares at me like I’m broken.
I don’t register the stare.
The division closed. That look
must belong to the space between words,
the void where faces do things
that don’t mean anything to me.
She walks away.
“You just don’t… can’t… understand.”
I understand.
I understand that my lungs
feel like they’ve been shaved with sandpaper.
That twenty years of cigarettes
have me wondering if they’ll be there
at my division. At my end.
I understand nine months of waking up
coughing till I gag,
the feeling of a chest too full for air,
the color of blood on a paper towel.
I understand that I am afraid
at every conversation–
that if it goes on too long,
I might not see the end.
I need to know the ending.
I understand that I won’t go back
to the doctor. Last time
he mentioned the C word.
That word.
If I never go back,
that conversation never ends.
If it never ends, it isn’t real.
Everything real has an end.
I stifle a cough
so she won’t turn around.
I understand.
I open my mouth,
but there’s nothing else left to say.