I know you won’t believe me because
You’re in the thick of it, planning
Who will pick you up from the emergency
Room at 6am, who you haven’t worn out
Yet, because this will be your fourth
Time in three weeks, lustily watching the 
Die with dignity commercials weirdly played
With the chirpy local morning news
You’re up watching at 4am because 

That
Pain

Has kept you up all night 
Having rolling panic attacks
Sobbing into your fuzzy couch pillows
Watching 90210 reruns trying to make the 
Impossibly sweaty decision of sleep meds or 
Pain meds, thinking maybe the ultimate relief
Would be taking them at the same time and
Tearing a hole in the universe as the doctors
Assured you would happen if you did.

You don’t go that route
And I’m proud of you.

It feels like this will go on forever
But I assure you it won’t. Just like your
Last sweet peach happiness squished between 
Your Grabby fingers leaving them longing
And sticky, so the bitter bile will 
Pass out from between your gritted teeth
Damn near burning them to powder. 

You will smile again with those teeth
I swear.

The pain will become a shadow’s shadow in 
Your sunlight mind and this time your 
Sweet peach will taste richer for the compassion
That’s in it, for the lady annoying everyone moaning
In the ER bay next to you—because you were that lady—
For the wasting cancer patients who do this not months
But years and still smile at their children’s birthday parties

For 
Yourself 

When the bitter bile rises up again
As it will in a thousand ways
Body and heart but you will know
You will lie back into it languid limbs
Ride it like a native body surfer and know
It passes, this wave too, and this one

They all pass. 

-M. Ashley