Post Chemo

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