Metastasia

One day,
when many summers yet remained for me,
the cough and phlegm of the starved
contemplated its many misspent summers –
above the muted hum of an oxygen concentrator,
and amid the useless drips of poison –
the foggy prognosis hung,
floating bland,
no more meaning left to its name
than, say, swirling summer sepia –
as motionless and fray-edged
as the smoke waiting to ignite,
cool and still in my lab coat pocket.

That day,
interventions barely preemptive, plaintive,
there is nothing left to be done –
no summers remain
yet
my impatience surrounds him,
cachectic and dusky,
his feathered fingers engulfed
by green-tinged tubing,
red-tipped oximetry –
still
my thoughts raced to my pocket.

I don’t even know what leads me to think of it now –
maybe the sweet mucus of my cough,
recalling how I left that room to light the cigarette,
confused with honeysuckle and humidity
embedded in the sunshine of the
yet remaining.

I exhale it all these years later
from a smoldering corner of my lung –
as those few summers
yet remaining
begin to gain
on me.