This isn't my usual kind of post, but I wrote some Slam Poetry in my CW class recently and I feel the urge to share. (TW: Cancer, Grief, and Death)
The Wait
The Wait has always been the worst part of life.
Waiting for the food to be done.
Waiting for the paint to dry.
When you're a kid every minute of waiting feels like an hour, and all you wanted was for time to speed up.
As you grow, you learn to fill the Wait with other things.
The Wait until school is out.
The Wait until you can drive.
The Wait until you graduate.
Filling the crevices with little bits of life, or at least distraction.
And then one day your entire perspective on waiting changes.
All of the sudden you'd give anything for the clock to slow.
Each tick of the clock feels like divine punishment.
Punishment for ever wishing the clock would move faster.
Because now you know what it's like to wait for someone to die.
You can only watch as the strongest, most stable you know's life slips away like sawdust in the Shop-Vac.
There's no cure, only The Wait.
The Wait as the sickness eats up his smile like aphids to his garden.
So you do all you know how and distract yourself from The Wait.
Pretend you don't notice that he can't help you in the shed anymore.
That you don't know this will be the last time he can measure your height.
One day they bring in the bed and the oxygen tank.
You can't look at him without knowing anymore, so you don't.
You hide away and pretend he's not even there.
Every night you're scared to go to sleep because tomorrow might be the day you can't pretend anymore.
You mow the lawn on your own for the first time because he can't get out of bed anymore.
You spend two whole months waiting until your dad wakes you up one morning and just holds you in his arms.
He holds you like you're a little kid and that's when you know you'll never be little again.
The Wait is over.
And now... you're numb.
Unable to feel.
It stays like that for 5 years.
Until one day you finally read the papers he gave you almost 10 years ago.
Build plans in his scratchy handwriting that you have no idea how to decipher.
And it hits you.
You can't just call him like you do when you need Grandma's sewing advice.
And finally the dam built up by the waiting finally breaks, and you cry.
You cry like the day you were born.
And then...
You get up.
And you take one step.
Then another.
The clock ticks on and so does your heart.
You know that one day the torrent of pain will dry up into a small stream.
It's all about The Wait.
