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 the missing date 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