Life Hits You
Life hits you raw,
smack in the face like a cold, wet cloth
seeping into your skin
with a curling you only thought existed with a hot iron.
It tangles and mangles the flesh
and beseeches nothing less than a pint of blood
each time the puncture hits.
I swear I could lose myself in the rat race.
When the car horns scream in the early morning and
you know you've left sanity behind at the day care program,
even though all of those kids at once
would send you over the edge,
nothing that comes next even compares to where you came from.
The goodbye hug in the morning has passed into
into a tickler file of things to remember to talk about,
filtering into the in basket of "corporate"
until some cream-colored metallic Lexus
cuts you off and you miss the turn where you always stop
for your first cup in the morning.
To enter without it would prompt too many questions
for the sake of 'donut gossip' - you aren't ready for conversation.
Late is better than without as the turn comes automatic.
It is then, after automated monotony, that it hits. Life.
The worries of late with coffee, or on time without.
Trivial in the scheme of what matters since the diagnosis.
Do you tell them? Perhaps not yet. Bottom of the in basket...
Hell, you're not ready to tell yourself yet,
though when you touch your fingers to that telling place
above your ribcage,
---the lump is there.
Schedules will change with the unreality of it all
and maybe they can get it all - and maybe they can't -
and maybe they can get it all....
Fear rises the realization as throat thickens.
"Large light, no sugar." - automatic.
Keep it normal. Keep it routine. Don't change anything
and maybe the familiarity will make the changes
seem easier. Acceptance is hard coming.
And what do you tell her? She with the dimpled smile
who you work so hard for? Who's first thought of the day is
"Mommy"
who's last thought of the day is "Mommy".
What do you tell her?
Life hits you hard
smack in the face with a rawness
that barters nothing.
Copyright © 2007
Pamela A. Lamppa
(All Rights Reserved)
Poetry by Pamela A Lamppa
Read 1310 times
Written on 2007-06-07 at 22:47
Tags Life
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