Chemotherapy

Chemotherapy Hard work will set you free they would say to you. God rests here, no motion needed--Lazarus rises dizzily, to fall again, to rise, to fall. You would sooner remain here, the former you abandoned like cicada husks on trees. The incoming hour encroaches like the dark, sways inside like motion sickness. That alluring black sky you admire is the coat of God, ruler of galaxies, promoter of all time. That mercurial brine below laps at your feet-- recedes--comes back, goes, comes back. Every finger moved, every lip touched, every thigh worshipped is the mirage you think you see. Like freckles on a face, like dark grain on old film, like those spots that bleach can't remove, we're cindered here, graffiti of the cosmos. Once, your mother lay with you whispering I'll do anything. You're my whole life. And the proof--a photograph on the wall of a young, hairless boy grasping a bucket of broken shells and sand, and the blue canopy of earth above him, big enough for all of us. We, the archived of the living, the footnotes of the dead.