More Tests - March 31 2024

 

More Tests

March 31 2024

More tests, the doctors said

just as they said before.

This limbo of not knowing

is its own kind of emptiness.

Time

weighs so heavily

an hour feels endless,

while an entire day

is Everest

looming impassably.

Yet in the alchemy of memory

those weeks of waiting

seem to have gone in a flash.

As if a black hole

had flattened everything,

its gravity

compressing time.

Which would be a mercy

if there wasn’t so little of it left.

At least a diagnosis satisfies

some academic need.

The power of naming things.

The illusion of knowing.

The delusion

of being in control.

Which is really just to substitute;

one uncertainty

exchanged for the next.

When I stepped out onto the street

why wasn’t I surprised

that the sun still shone,

traffic hummed,

pigeons cooed?

That the world went on

just as before?

A city sidewalk

full of people

living out their lives:

panhandlers

holding cardboard signs,

mothers herding children,

eyes on phones.

While I, the invisible man

walked to the car

and ducked in the door.

An automaton,

with no memory

of leaving the office

or crossing to the curb,

no idea

how long I had left.

But at least no more tests

I said to myself,

waiting

and waiting some more

for the traffic to part.