illa

She still has good days amidst the bad
loves kisses on the cheek and comforting hugs
she is brittle and pliant all at once

She’s not the glass of window panes
with a clear view to the inside
She is the glass of sun catchers  
complex and multifaceted

Her cancer is all consuming but you wouldn’t know it. It’s almost as if she glances over it like a signature on some hassling renter’s final rent cheque as you watch him push his glasses down his bridge to signal his intention that he’s apt to come back later and collect his belongings.
Could be today. Could be tomorrow
but he’s coming

She is everything awesome and flawed all at once
unchallenged by the leather of her plight
Challenged only by the length of its tether

Positive in reflection
the bravest of faces
Lives each day as if it were her second to last stop
on a stone laden road
Where up ahead
It is chronically and sardonically bumpy

Enlisted fully in this life
her only chance—
and she lives amongst the collision
before death pries her vision
before her body dines on sour sugar
and the fumes of its vapour
turned into tonic, half full, with a menacing aftertaste

These toxins have collected
in the space that is empty
in the vessel of ignorant wishes
Where she is granted resin in her veins

She’s scrawled letters to the big guy
asking why me
and she was handed back a script
with illegible scribbles
Page after page of muddle
She asks for the translation,
but there’s no cypher for this riddle
And the book doesn’t appreciate being questioned
She settles while it narrates her tomorrow
She might readily accept it if it’s painless

You’re such a positive light! they say.
You got this! They say
But she knows the truth
She resists forward thinking,
Keeps her emotions under wraps,
entombed and unspoken
She acceptant of fate
loves life despite its perils

Everyday she awakens
the sun catches her prisms
and radiates all of its colours
making beauty out of this deviation