DisEase
And in his eyes I saw something
I had thought never to see
In those laughing, loving eyes
An impossibility
It was anger, rage
Burning fast and free
And all the more impossible
To feel it burning me
And while my heart was distracted
I almost missed what he said
I wanted to run from those sterile walls
But I braced myself instead
“Do you understand?” he asked
Now shouting at me
The nurse quick-stepped in
With a dose of complacency
I backed out of the room
Pretending it wasn’t a retreat
His mother, lip curled back
Glared at me
With eyes as sharp
As the shoes on her feet
“If you’re going to upset him
You might as well leave.”
I laughed and laughed
It was nothing but a joke
And she was the punch line
I laughed until I chocked
“Don’t you see, old woman?
He needs to be upset
I’d rather have him hating me
Than drugged up and half dead”
And then I was crying
Because I understood
The words that he had said to me
Made more sense than they should
After the anger, before the pain
He touched my hand
And said my name
“Make my disease a charity”
And now I understood
I would do it for his mother
Who still couldn’t face
This ugly, growing problem
Unless she came at it sideways
If she gave it a name
And it could be paid
Then it became real
Something she could hold
Something she could kill
And if with commercials
She sent to the homes
Of every other person
Then it was not her own
And if he became a problem
That belonged to everyone
She could pretend that the problem
Was not her dying son
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