The Haunting. The Real. The Caution. The Toll.

The Haunting

The Ghost does not live controlled by time;
ticking seconds to hours; days to years,
birthday cake candles and calendar moments,
seasons and sunrises, sunsets, and moon phases.
Unobliged to obey, It makes Its own way.

The Ghost doesn’t count the way that we do,
liberated from how it goes 1.. to 2.. to 3.. to 4.., 5.. to 6.. to 7.., to 8,9,10.
2+2 doesn’t have to = 4 because what even is a 2 and a 4?
Its language of space and time and logic is arbitrary and abstract; 
Unconformed, unconfined, & unconstrained.

The Ghost can come and go as it pleases,
no rhyme or reason,
no sense, no justification, no explanation.
Unapologetically it can haunt whomever it wants.
Unashamedly it can haunt whenever it feels like it.

The doctors and scientists are bound where The Ghost isn’t.
Prognoses… Expectancies… QOLS… at best predicted,
each based on statistical relevance,
each founded in numbers and time and reason.
But The Ghost remains free to be free.

Patients and caregivers at the whim of It.
Does It see age? Or capacity? Does It care? Or consider anything?
Power? Wealth? Or lack thereof?
Does It think twice? Ever?
Or are we all just prey to Its fancy?

The Ghost haunts in the shadows of survivorship.
Though invisible, Its presence known by the one surviving.
Lingering and perpetual. Permanent and lasting.
Some will fault the survivor as hopeless and faithless, lacking gratitude and joy;
yet they don’t know The Ghost that torments.

Here in my surviving
The Ghost I know haunts ME.

©ThePurposedSailor

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The Real 

August 7, 15, 18, 20, 22, 24, 25, 30. September 8, 10, 19, 26, 29.
October 1, 9, 18, 24, 30. November 17, 20. December 5, 11, 16, 19. January 3, 5, 22.
February 8, 12, 19-28. March 1, 2-29, 5, 26. April 16. May 3, 7, 29. June 9, 18, 25. July 8, 9, 30.
All of the months 
not one of them spared,
hold souvenirs that shatter me.
August to August, 
it doesn’t matter the year,
holds stories that wreck me.

Birthdays. Thanskgivings. Christmases. First-Days-of-Schools. Milestones. Mommy-ing.
Yummy foods. Sleeping soundly. Volleyball. Softball. Muffins with Mom. Crossroads. 
Michigan. Niagara. Florida. Central Park. Fall’s colors. Winter’s flakes. 
All of the good memories 
in-between all of the bad 
soured by wretched potions.
Poisons, toxins, and banes, negotiating
a ruthless bargain with Death,
for my life.

Rooms. Photos. Roads. Colors. Bras. Boobs. Health. Showers. Dig Pink Nights.
Smells. Mirrors. Aches. Pains. Touch. Commercials. Sounds. Octobers.
Vulnerability of every kind. Trust of any kind. Hope of all kinds.
Trauma 
random and unjust 
blindsided me outta nowhere.
Such ordinary things,
now turned into triggers, 
brutally echo the undoing within me.

Me. My daughters. My partner. My parents.
Here it’s so very crowded with standing room only
but actually, vacant and empty and ugh is it ever lonely.
Forever Changed 
where we’re left to pick up the pieces,
is where we now live. 
A place we’ll never get to leave, 
here, in a demented Wonderland,
where normal has ceased to exist.

All 31 scars proving the resilience of my presence, my will to live.
But the chronic pain fixed in every breath and in every step,
from now till forever, will always remind me of my frailty. 
Cancer’s cost 
is astronomical at its least 
for the patient and their people.
The high stakes of survival, 
anted up only by the permanent risk 
of cancer’s feared recurrence.

©ThePurposedSailor

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The Caution 

To call me an inspiration . . .
To compare me to others . . .
To claim it all happens for a reason . . .
. . . Reflects your privilege rather than your empathy, and
. . . Rather than beholding the evidence of my reality, you
. . . Reduce me to a mere function of motivation.

To At Least me with all the silver linings . . .
To At Least me with all the positive opposites . . .
To At Least me with all the ways it could be worse . . .
. . . Reflects your privilege rather than your empathy, and
. . . Rather than beholding the evidence of my reality, you
. . . Reduce me to a mere object of nuance.

To suggest that cancer is a blessing . . . 
To say the battle is won by His strongest soldiers . . . 
To imply that cancer is a God-plan for all good and no harm . . . 
. . . Reflects your privilege rather than your empathy, and
. . . Rather than beholding the evidence of my reality, you
. . . Reduce me to a mere equation of faith.

©ThePurposedSailor

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The Toll

The tension strains
forced and fickle
between
“My body betrayed me”
and
“You’d better be grateful.”

The conflict spurs
edgy and precarious
between
the joy of surviving
and 
the suffering of living.

The pendulum swings 
swift and abrupt
between 
I hate it here 
and 
IDGAF.

©ThePurposedSailor

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August’s Message

#cancersucks my friends. The anniversaries don’t get easier. Time doesn’t actually heal all wounds….especially when time is fundamentally altered by forever change. August is my January…the 25^th is my 1^st. Friday, August 25 of 2017 I got “The Call” and from that day on, though they told me I’d get back to normal, I’m living in a reality that there is really no such thing.

I hope that my poems above give insight and perspective to the experience of surviving. And I hope that you can read them without arguing with them. They speak an awful truth even if that truth is hard to hear.

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Thanks for reading, I so appreciate you. See you next month. 💚

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© Amber Havekost, The Purposed Sailor
***As with any of my posts, you may not reproduce or copy without written permission from me. If you quote any of my work, you must cite and tag @thepurposedsailor and @ambernichole*** Thank you <3