Leukemia

The disease was in your blood

Running through your veins
Mixed in- a part of the very thing that was keeping you alive.
How do you get rid of something like that?
They couldn’t freeze your body momentarily in time and
Drain your veins of the poison-
And along with it, your life
And then
As soon as your body was cold and white, emptied
Pump you back up again
Inflate your capillaries, slowly, like the blowing up of a balloon
Set your heart to work again
Pumping blood that was clean and healthy and good for you.
No, medicine isn’t magic. And cancer doesn’t work that way. 

Even if they did that,
just like even if you went into remission
The cancer was in your bones
Literally; You were full of it. 
You were probably
Going to die. 
You told me the story once
How you did die, actually, just for a few seconds
Once, it was a scare.
Then twice and when it looked too grim for even
The hopefullness of a mother to overlook,
They started to plan:
The graveyard was next to the church
The tombstone was white marble, but small, unassuming
The years would read 1992 to 1998
And your coffin was forty-six inches long.

When I met you, you were nineteen
And it hurt my heart that I couldn’t go back
I would’ve hugged the six-year-old you
And cried a stream of mingled saltwater and snot into your blonde scruffy hair
You would’ve held me, stalwart, braver than me
Even as a little boy

I can see myself now, the rashness of my behavior-
I would’ve cut open my arm with a kitchen knife;
I would have sliced open my veins and pressed them to yours
Futilely, foolishly
Thinking somehow I could save you
In some ill-performed Indian blood-brother ritual
You would’ve pushed me, bloodied and crazed, off of you
And wiped away my tears on the hem of your hospital gown.
I can imagine the six-year-old you
So practical, wise, numb to the silly emotions of the
Adults around you that you couldn’t quite understand.
You just wanted to go to Disney.

We talked about this in a coffee shop
Maybe a year or so ago, now
Because you’re not dead, nor are in you remission.
You’re just done; the cancer is gone.
They put your brother’s bone marrow in you because they know how to do that these days
His blood flows through your veins
And though we laugh about it now, how you could commit a crime and get away with it
Because you share your brother’s exact DNA
The truth is that it’s for that alone you’re still alive
For that alone you could talk to me in a coffee shop at all
Or even grow old enough to learn the taste of coffee.
And so we laugh because it’s wonderful; we laugh because we’re terrified. 

And yes your growth was stunted
And yes your father beat you
And the hospital still holds you hostage sometimes
You can’t breathe so well, or do much physical activity
You know every kind of pain medication
Better then you know the periodic table
Which is so frustrating, so infuriating to this
Nineteen-year-old me
Because you were going to be a doctor
Pediatric oncology
To save the other little boys like you
So capable- you, so smart
Clearly meant to be on this earth and do something the rest of us can’t do
I would carry on for you
But I am sick myself, in a different way
And even if I was strong enough, I’d never be smart enough
I’m the girl that tried to give you my blood, remember?
Probably traumatized you for life as I pressed my
Bleeding arms to your tiny, tube-tied body

Why aren’t you here?
Do you ask yourself that?
Why are you alone, not by choice, but by force?
Why did God save you, again and again
To then lock you in this prison
Of…domesticity
You are a twenty-year-old future pediatric oncologist
Stuck in an eighteen year-old boy’s body
Trapped in the life of a fifties housewife

If I were you, I’d scream.
I’d get drunk off of vodka and throw up in a trash can
I’d chain smoke off the back deck and yell at my mother
I’d listen to trashy music and watch internet porn
I’d cut up my arms, not to save anybody, just to harm myself
And when all of that proved futile
I’d lie in my bed listening to the argument in my head
Between the former me and the current me and God
And all the while contemplate suicide.

But. That’s just me. I am not like you. Clearly.
You are- different. Special.
How many times have they told you that? How many times have you wanted to
Smash dishes, break bones
Because those fucking words are meaningless
When you’re stuck here in this home

And do you ever cry?
Or was I the only one…
To see you break down in tears
On the edge of a winter-thawing swamp
On the seat of a frozen cornfield
You cried
I would’ve saved you, six-year-old you
With my blood and my tears
I would’ve saved you
Eleven-year-old you
By taking you away from you father
I would’ve saved you
Twenty-year-old you
From the fury and despair of your curtain-lined jail
How is it I would not save you
Nineteen-year-old you
When you told me I was breaking your heart?