“You are going to die.”
A numbness so deep it doesn’t seem real.
A delirium induced by absence, not presence.
Those words crawl into battered shoulders.
They echo through all the hollow places.
They run down a spine knotted and showing.
They trace along skin stretched tight over ribs.
They braid themselves with breaking hair.

“You are going to die.”
Not a threat, but a promise if there is no change.
Not a joke, but grim certainty without pretense.
Those words slam into my anxious thoughts.
They spin a world that is already upside down.
They reflect in my funhouse mirror eyes.
They slide into my empty stomach.
They put roots into my jutting bones.

“You are going to die.”
Tears bubble up like a wellspring of pain.
Tears pour down like a rainstorm of sorrow.
Those words ache in a shattered heart.
Somehow sharper than their cutting judgments.
Somehow deeper than their love expressed.
Somehow weightier than my Sisyphean stone.
Somehow harder than even a swallow.

Sixteen. Twenty-two. Twenty-seven.
Always the same, always terrifying.
Yet the course barely changes.
"You are going to die."

I know.