Metastasis

98.00


Autumn is the season when everything dies.


The leaves shrivel up and your lungs go with them, tiny dejected organs drying out inside your sternum, crinkling under our footsteps. The doctors pronounce their diagnosis as the leaves fall, listing medical terms and percentages and something about medication options.


The disease is metastatic: it has bored its way out of your lungs and into your bones. Dissatisfied, it's going for your organs, your liver, your heart. The prognosis says Christmas is a pipe dream, likely as the sun ceasing to set.


You promise it anyway.




94.00


November comes and I am a fish, breathing through makeshift gills carved into my hips, lopsided and crude.


I make fresh ones twice a day, slice myself open once in the morning and once at night in hopes the air will come a little easier each time. I make three and count them off:


one,
two,
three,


and hope my heart stops.




92.00


The leaves have been carted away, pummeled into dust, and blown away in the wind.


Your lungs are failing and so are mine as I lay flat on the shower floor, porcelain unforgiving to the marbles that are my spine. My chest heaves and the air smells of vomit. It is in my hair, on the walls, slathered down my chest –everywhere.


Food doesn't stay down for long anymore; my fingers beg and curl as soon as each bite passes through my lips. I run to the shower, crank the water up to scalding, and do the deed, crying all the while.  


You know –you hear me through the wall. I retch and scrape and scratch and purge, blood and bile coating my shaking hands.


Dazed and medicated, you shift and sob, then drift off to sleep.




90.00


You're sitting on the toilet, the door wide open and your eyes at half mast, tufts of your hair sticking out at odd angles; you've had permanent bed-head since the doctor gave the prognosis.


I walk by and your voice comes out cracked, damaged, the way it would sound if you spoke at 2:30 in the morning after waking up from a nightmare.


"Jessie, what're you doing to yourself?"


I stop, and for a moment the cold outside seeps in and freezes my feet to the floor. My gills aren't for breathing at all anymore –they are mouths, greedy and hungry. When she speaks, they scream.


I am quiet, my own lips long since stitched shut.


A moment passes, and then the spell's broken. My feet are free from their icy prison, and I walk away.


You never say another word.




87.00


December rolls in, harsh and unforgiving. Needles prick my skin when I venture outside and the sun seems to have undergone a permanent eclipse by the clouds. It never sets because it never rises. Not anymore.


You were right. You always were.


The house is never quiet now, the whisper of the hospice nurses and the whirr of the machines a constant, unyielding presence. The raspy voice of the respirator and the drone of the heart monitor keep me awake at night, reassuring. I wake up from nightmares of empty beds and that long, deafening buzz and lay there, listening.


Twenty-five days. I cross off the days on my calendar, the date circled.


You promised.




84.50


It's Christmas day and snow is falling, like magic.


They call it a Christmas miracle, but it's not the one we asked for, the focus of our prayers moaning down the hall, convulsing. It isn't until eight minutes after eleven that the eerie silence fills the house, and we all know.


Thirty minutes later and it's my turn to say goodbye. You lay there, your face contorted, eyes forced shut, body swollen and pale. I press a kiss to your just-warm cheek and walk away, tears burning in my eyes.


You were not ready.


We call hospice and they're here an hour later with back up, ambulance lights setting the trees on fire. They carry you away, and I press my face into a pillow to scream.


You were not ready.




75.00


They've set you aflame and locked you up: you're an ornament now, a tiny silver heart wired up on a chain.


Every time I do the deed, you smack my forehead; we lurch in perfect unison.


It's May now, and we are throwing you in the ocean, in the city where I was born. The salty air seeps into our bones and chills us to the core. I have on a pair of pants, fleece tights, two sweaters, a jacket and two pairs of socks. I am always cold now.


You slip through my fingers like the sand at my feet, bits of bone shards resting in my palm that I chuck into the ocean.


I cannot feel anything. I am numb.




72.50


It's June and I have realized I am going to die.


My heart is hiccupping out thirty eight beats per minute and my legs hardly work anymore. My hair is coming out in clumps, dandelion fluff floating to the floor. There is a dull pain in my chest, my lungs, my heart.


This is beyond heartache.


You, your heavy presence, your choking hold around my neck does not give me much of a choice.


I have to eat.




72.00


We are ripping down the street at sixty miles an hour, dinner the only thing keeping me weighted down in my seat. We fly over the bridge and I laugh, squeezing my father around his waist.


I can feel the marrow vibrating in my bones from the hum of the machine, my knees bruising from knocking against metal. You're pressed hard against my chest from sheer speed, but I can ignore that. I am free. For the first time in months, I feel alive.  




We ride home and he takes the motorcycle around back, calling me. My father sits on the deck and pats the arm of the seat next to him.


"Jessie," I sit and he starts, his eyes glossy, "I'm going to take you somewhere in a few days, so you can get better. I don't know if you can see it, but you're sick. Really sick."


The mouths scream but I am louder. "Dad, I'm anorexic."


"I know, honey. I know."




?


I've placed your picture on my nightstand at the hospital. It's you from the golden years, when you were still smiling, still truly alive. Your hair was cut short, spun wheat in a bob around your face and your eyes a deep, shining mahogany.


The doctors tell me I'm lucky to be alive. I tell them I'm really not.


I introduce you to them, hold out your silver casket and make a sad smile. "This is my mom," I say, and my voice cracks on the first 'm'.


The food scares me; eating it scares me even more. The doctors start me out slow, but soon I'm sprinting. I'm feeling, crying, living. I'm finally alive.


They tell me you'd be proud. I hope so.