Today's offering to the poetry gods for National Poetry Writing Month is reminiscent of the days when I was going through chemotherapy and the feeling of slipping away one experiences when they feel they are near death.
SUN AND SALT
When I was dying,
or knew I was dying,
I fell in love with the idea of dying.
Part of me was so relieved it would be over soon,
I rejoiced inside.
Almost ecstatic with the piece by piece feeling of loss.
Part of it was the pain meds.
So strong, half the time
I wasn't certain I wasn't already dead.
But, I would see a glimpse of sunlight
through my hospital bedroom window
(in the ER for cancer patients)
and I would imagine the cool
Orange county ocean breeze.
Not quite close enough to the ocean
to see too many seagulls outside.
But close enough to get just a hint
of the brine in the healing air.
Like a taste on your tongue,
you're on quite tasting.
Or maybe it was just the saline drip.
I don't know.
I just knew the sunlight
and the imagined small of the sea
would bring me back
to the living world.
And selfishly I knew I wouldn't have either
if I kept going down that other path.
Copyright Celena Diana Bumpus
Sun and Salt by Celena Diana Bumpus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://perceiveideas.blogspot.com/2013/05/napowrimo-day-7.html.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://perceiveideas.blogspot.com.
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