Pink POLST Poem
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34061662/
I Will Die Softly
https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/jpm.2020.0749?journalCode=jpm
We Were Not the Same
Brown skin, dimples, evenly spaced white teeth, minty chiclets.
Small squiggly braids around your broad smile, the one you showed me.
Long lean legs, delicate fingers drew swirling hearts in the notes we passed.
We giggled side by side at your dad’s apartment in Brentwood.
Next to the post office and the dog park, the faded paint needed attention.
No one else in eighth grade lived in an apartment. I felt like a grown up.
You felt −
We sang.
Our voices converged, wrapping around like Havdalah candles.
Swirling colors rising to an orange flame together.
I did not see that we were not the same.
I erased your difference when we braided ourselves together and wore the same red
striped shorts.
Dated the same boys.
Later you called and I could finally hear your world in the tears.
The cascades of your life.
The fire came to your throat after years of whiskey and embers.
Cancer.
You never made it back to California.
You held the phone in your tiny perfect hands that braided, strummed and cooked.
I finally heard you.
Why can’t I be saved?
Famous Ex-Boyfriend
Imogen Heap shouts from my car speakers. The techno tones
thrum across my chest matching the buzz I’m sporting from the worst first date I ever had.
Speeding down familiar streets that feel new, heart pounding herky-jerky, fired up by
the music and a strange energy percolating in my veins.
My body knows something is wrong before my brain understands.
You brought a secret.
Your favorite mirrored bar reflected you in a thousand broken pieces.
I drank from glittering glasses to make it feel like a moment that mattered.
I followed you home for the same reason.
The image of you sobbing in fetal position begging me to
hold you without telling me what you had done.
We lay on the mattress in your awkward bachelor pad and you cried into my arms about
something that wasn’t mine.
That first night you asked me to marry you. You put your hands around my waist and
propped me up on the flesh colored tile in the ugly apartment.
So sexy you say. We are so sexy together you say, looking at your reflection.
You never cried again because you gave me your tears. Now I am the crazy
one noticing as you sip your rum in the morning hangover by the pool where you watch
girls in tiny bikinis. Like you did with her.
I left you and your diseases
The cruelty and the drinking.
The icy heart.
You stirred up my pain when you lay briefly soft like a baby. So I stayed.
And now I see you everywhere.
Motherdoctorwriter 