What does it feel like 

To live with the reality 

Of time 

Going

On

To imagine more than a day

Week

Month 

Maybe 

If you’re really lucky

A year ahead.

Yes, this is all about the earthy dense rich soil of the well 
Verses the inexplicable wilderness of the sick.

What does it mean 
To be really fucking sick to suffer suffer suffer
To live constantly with Death hovering flapping her wings always calling to you
To be really fucking hour by hour
Day by day
Week by week
Year by year
Decade after decade
Sick?

While I’m asking this why not expand my myopic question and ask:
What does it mean to be really really beautiful? 
Hey what does it mean to be really handsome? 
What does it mean to be angry despairing hopeless? 
What is it mean to love 

What does it mean to be alive 
What does is it mean to die

What does it feel like to love 

What does it feel like to be alive

And what does it feel like to die?

What does it feel like to lose every day of your life,
Having to work 12 hours a day 
What does it feel like to be so angry that you can’t see past 
What is lodged behind your eyes 
What does it feel like to be so afraid that you can’t take a step forward backward side ways 
What does it feel like to be frozen in place 
What does it feel like to be walking down the street and have people 
Gaze at you because you’re just as beautiful as a flower 
Or just as handsome as the movie star you saw last night in the film 

That man whose name you can’t remember because you are so sick or old getting old and brain cells really really do die.

All that rage you wielded at your mother when she was the age you are now;
Where was your compassion 
Where was your heart
Where is our wisdom when we are young
Where does it hide
Now you know what it feels like to not be able to remember.

If someone asked you who the vice president was you would not be able to answer

Not because you’ve not remembered but because it’s not important enough for you to pay attention

Because you don’t care

Because you know before you know it he (or she, you would remember she), will be history.

What does it feel like to love 

To open your heart totally loving another being 
Knowing at any moment
Tonight tomorrow next week next month next year in the next decade 
That person will leave you for another 
Or leave you for death 
Or just stop loving you.

What does it feel like to open your heart anyway

What does it feel like to walk into a room barely able to stand 
Filled with anger and despair, sickness love fear hope 
Promise or so many 
Many regrets
And know that nobody can see any of what you feel 
Because all they see is what you look like.

What does it feel to show people what you really feel

That beautiful woman across a room with a handsome husband 
A couple of lovely children
A beautiful house in the hills 
A great job 
That beautiful woman who is half your age, 
What does she think when she looks at you? 

Does she think the same thing when she looks at you 
You thought when you were her age and 
You looked at a woman your age? 
Does she think “thank fucking God I’m only 37”
Does she think, 
I’ll never get to be her age not because I won’t get to be her/ age 
Because I will always remain 37.

We all think it will never happen to me never me. 
Nope. Won’t happen to me, not me, 
I won’t get old I won’t get ugly I won’t get wrinkled I won’t get sick 
I won’t lose any body
I won’t lose friends to death before they turn 50 
I won’t lose my home to a fire
I won’t lose my parents to illness first, dementia and death
I won’t lose my child I won’t lose my brother my sister my best friend no not me.

Yes, I know it all happens
But no not to me. 

Truth about our lives, about this life,
We are all living, is
Precious and invaluable,
And so hard to discern. 

We all have our endless ways of losing it, don’t we?
How do we find and keep it, close,
To our minds and hearts, spirits and souls,
Like the sacred and O so necessary being it is?

What does it feel like to know truth is like a flower? 

© Susan Gesmer 2017/2018