Thomas

Had you not been working in your lab
Would I now know your name?
Would we be intimates,
You, me and God?
Contemporaries in discovery
I can’t help but wonder
If this was just an accident
This knowing
That I don’t want to know
Of lymphomas and radiation
Naming the stages
So that I can mark the years
In infections and prayers

Some knowings are mask behind
Simple things
Colds, headaches, fever
Hiding from early detection
In over the counter treatments
How was I to know
At 29 years of age
What prolonged and acute
Actually looked like
Me in my life and her in hers
Passing and greeting
In texts and voicemails

Did God give you leave to
Find the door
Through which a loved one
Can exit to go back home?
I needed her to be here with me
But she was borrowed
And not mine,
A loan paid back with interest
I keep her passport on my dresser
The page is folded and stamped on
Her last stop, the “Hodgkins” line.

© NP 04/04/11