Part I — Easter Sunday/April Fool’s Day
Awakened
in the dead of night.
A perforating hot steel through my left side.
Pissing, shitting,
sitting up, rolling to one side.
Nothing would ease the suffering.
The Emergency Room
provided multiple forms
of futile salvation
The consequences of past acts
in concentrated form:
A kidney stone.
Nothing more to be done.
Just accept the pain and wait
for it to pass.
Eight hours felt like three days.
The molten manifestation meandered
from my left side to my core.
Then Salvation!
The pain removed.
The body restored.
Hoping, waiting for the molten rock
(In Cheeto shape and color?)
to pass into a cup.
Expecting a rolling boulder,
the cause of my suffering
was no bigger than a spec of dust.
How something so insignificant
could fold and reduce a man
into a muddle of despair.
Part II — May 11th: My Father Dies
He had surgery in mid-April.
Intestines were bypassed around the tumor.
Removing the tumor, they thought, may cause death.
It was only a matter of time.
We were told six months.
However
The tumor grew,
the tumor burst,
the tumor created sepsis and death.
I received the calls the night before.
And I was on the next available flight
but it was too late.
My brothers told the ambulance to wait.
When I arrived, I got to see him,
his body, one last time.
Part III — June 14th: Birthday Week
Surgery to repair
a double hernia.
Umbilical and Inguinal.
My body shaved and bare.
Sharpie lines beneath the inflammation and stitches
Larger than I imagined.
More pain than I imagined.
I cannot walk.
I cannot pee.
Finally, a catheter,
releases and I continue
for the next twelve hours, on the hour.
Six weeks of healing.
No heavy lifting, no running,
no sex.
Part IV — August 10th: The Seventh Week
Then the eighth.
I am beginning to feel
back to normal.
A friend comes to visit.
Evening skateboarding,
a familiar place.
A pebble.
The skateboard stops.
I do not.
The elbow is broken
in two places.
Six more weeks of healing.
Part V — December 30th: The End
A Friday afternoon meal
becomes a Saturday evening
of Evacuation.
It is New Year’s Eve.
But again,
I am a muddle of despair.
The Ball is dropping in another room.
I can hear the celebrations through the door,
bent and sweating around a toilet.
(Bent and sweating around a toilet, the year plays back to me behind my closed, teary eyes. I allowed myself to sink way below the surface and stay there in a fog for as long as I could. Below the surface of caring. I was essentially absent from my own life. I took care of my parental, family, and work obligations, but whenever I was able, I was back in the fog. I would find things to be out of the house, out of my life. I went to movies, concerts, bars. The fog of anonymity… To let go, to heal. How hard can it be? Just letting go. It became clear to me, there on the bathroom floor in a pool of sweat, that letting go is not as easy as it seems. Things have a way of seeping in. To remove it becomes very difficult. And if you are able to remove it, there is a big gaping hole left behind. It may take years, a lifetime to fully heal. If by some twists of fate, you have multiple wounds to heal, it could be enough to break a person… But the solitude, and the intake of meaningful and heartfelt things was a good tonic for me. A good beginning. In the solitude, in the dark, in a crowd, I was able to start releasing.)
Releasing all the poison and all the pain,
while I count down to midnight
of the year that nearly did me in.
