Wishing Well

Death keeps throwing down the gauntlet, challenging me.
He's testing me, plumbing the depths of my strength
And with bravado I've managed to deceive him
that I've got more where that came from
even though the well has run dry.
Is the strength in the walls,
or in the capacity to hold?
Or is it in what is being held?
Because I'm holding myself tight
worried that if I breathe too deeply
I'll splinter into shards of light.
And its too soon for that, for me.

Instead my strength keeps me here,
chin deep in what others bleed.
And I know you're thinking "how gross"
And if not you're thinking  "poor thing"
But I'm not out for your sympathy
Just your ears, if you'd lend one to me.

Once upon a time there were three.
It's a good number, 3
but soon its just me
And I'm tired, see
I'm the last of my mother's daughters
And maybe its not the same as being the last of the Mohicans
or the last of Flynn's isomorphic algorithms
but its lonely, lonely in an alone-with-others kind of way.

It took Death two years to take the middle sister
She burned so brightly her luminosity
couldn't be contained by her skin
Photos the week before she died show what we refused to see
her smiling angelically, glowing ethereally,
welcoming Death the way we see in the elderly
like an old friend instead of an enemy.
A 38 year old woman shouldn't know Death so intimately
But she did and now she's gone and its been me doing the strong thing
putting it on like a suit of armor every morning
and its heavy, heavy in a dutiful-sister kind of way.

So I try to lay in as long as possible
savoring the softness of my sheets
promising myself the day will be a good day
but no matter when I wake or sleep
Reality creeps between the seams of my eyelids
invading my days and my dreams
and I'm so tired, tired in a let-me-off-this-rollercoaster kind of way.


The littlest sister, she's dying too.
Her fragile mind keeps slipping gear, grinding and grinding
no matter how much she uses her daughter as a clutch
she can't escape her final curtain call to the applause
of cancer cells rapidly dividing themselves into oblivion.
In a lot of ways Death, she's joined you
She tried to murder herself again -- not dying fast enough she said.
Hell hath no fury like a woman who didn't wake up dead
She'll be pleased to meet you when this is through
she's got an axe to grind -- she's been sharpening it on her wrists
and since you're not coming for her, she's coming for you --
In her rage-against-Life kind of way.

Self-preservation demands it's pound of flesh
All else has failed, I'm letting her go
I'm wishing her well.
I don't fear Death but neither am I ready to embrace the night
nor will I shed more tears over the dying of the light.
I'm not fighting for my life so much as my sanity.
I've built a wall of sandbagged hopes, optimist me.
I'm wearing my heart on my sleeve and its pumping air
I don't have any blood or tears to spare
There's nothing there
The wishing well is empty.
But not too empty to care...

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