The crickets have arthritis
There is a poem I heard for the first time in high school, by a Canadian poet by the name of Shane Koyczan entitled The Crickets Have Arthritis. It was a specific line in this poem, upon hearing it for that very first time, that made me realize I wanted to be a poet.
It doesn’t matter why I was there, where the air is sterile and the sheets sting. It doesn’t matter that I was hooked up to this thing that buzzed and beeped every time my heart leaped, like a man who’s faith tells him: God’s hands are big enough to catch an airplane. Or a world. It doesn’t matter that I was curled up like a fist protesting death, or that every breath was either hard labor or hard time or that I’m always too hot or too cold
I think of this poem, in a role reversal way, on my 26th birthday. My hospital roommate is a man in his 70’s named Chuck. He’s the kind of man who flirts with all the nurses and calls them “baby girl, good girl, my girl”, who talks too loudly on the phone and I wonder if that’s because he’s also deaf. Chuck tries to make small talk with me, is one of the only people to wish me Happy Birthday this year, whispers it through a curtain that seperates us and I can’t even see his face.
There’s not enough miracles to go around
Chuck is dying. I know this from what I overhear during nursing rounds, what he tells his friends on phone calls and the woman I assume is his lover only to find out later she’s his ex wife. Cancer. And it’s spread. There’s nothing else they can do for him, he’s out of time, and during the entirety of my hospital stay Chuck never once rises from his bed. He can’t.
It makes sense now, the way he acts. And it’s late at night and I’m trying to sleep and Chuck is on the phone and I want to tell him to be quiet but I can’t. I know this is what he has left. I’ve never felt pity for anyone who is ill, mostly because i despise it when it is thrown my way, but I feel it now.
There’s too many people petitioning God for the winning lotto ticket, and for every answered prayer there’s a cricket with arthritis.
It’s late at night and Chuck struggles to breathe, suctions the mucous from his lungs the very same way I did once, and despite the memories that sneak through my subconcious at 3am and bring with them the paralyzing fear, I want to hold his hand. No one should have to go through this part alone.
I am aware of my place in this hospital, that I am here and was cut open and stitched back together, that I am sick forever and surgical measures are to contain the damage, but to Chuck I wonder if I just look like another young thing who gets to walk out of here. I’ll get to go home. And even though there’s a question mark on my 27th birthday RSVP, for Chuck it’s a definite no.
Our efforts don’t always get a reply, but I swear to whatever God I can find in the time I have left, I’m gonna remember you.
I don’t know who is going to write Chuck’s euology but I hope it’s someone great. I hope they tell all the stories about his life that he told me, about his ex wife that i thought was his lover and his son and his brother.
Chuck is old, and I know this, and cancer is unforgiving and I know this too. Life is cruel and unusual punishment, and it seems whatever shit life had to divy up it dropped an unusual amount on us two. I have spent so long just trying to get more time, to become all the things I want to become, and I realize that in the end that’s it. Time runs out, for everyone, and death will always feel cruel. And I look out the window while the tears stick to my cheeks and I can’t brush them away because of my bandages, and I don’t think Chuck can hear me but I hope maybe he can. At least then he’ll know he wasn’t alone.
I’ve brought a knife to this gun fight but the other night I mugged a mountain so bring that shit, I’ve had practice
I’ve had a lot of practice with dying, with living, with integrating the two, and it never gets easier but for whatever reason I keep expecting it to. I should be good at this by now. Maybe it’s a good thing that I’m not. Means I’ve still got something to lose, something more still to become.
For the first time in 26 years, I realize I have some.
