Sick

The worst thing was visiting the children’s hospital;
traffic jams cruel to my nausea. Thalassemia-Minor
affects hemoglobin’s synthesis at birth; reduced plasma
meant the nurse held no mercy in poking veins; blood’s
corridor for those seven years.

Afraid of needles and countless urinating in plastic cups,
virginal before capped by my last name and first initial—
An unripe specimen tied to adulthood fatigue; like a test
tube perplexing a scientific study.

Years of stool samples concealed in brown sandwich bags; I
never ate my lunch anyways, prompting mother to remonstrate
about child care without apt medical coverage; the only
housewife, on the Jewish block of Melrose and Hayworth,
without riches.

Flu-like symptoms began the summer I turned ten. I am
twenty-seven and temporary heat is again around the
corner; vomit has still procured the same unsettling acid.

Ovarian cysts happened at the end of father’s child support
before it ever existed. I turned eighteen, as his affection turned
obsolete; panic’s persuasion offered cold sheets warmed by
Morphine’s drip into the chaotic running, widespread in me.
Stress blessed me with the first rupture; dismissed from taking
part in my young’s creation along the line, yet luckily losing the
imminent chance of inheriting Thalassemia’s major ass-kicking.

No cure has been found for alleviating the traffic, the elementary
fatigue, the flaring stomach acid scorching my throat, urine samples
identifiable somehow without your name, the ability to procreate
ripped away and the certainty that nothing can be shaken from its
feelings.

Being sick is a nightmare no longer eased by your mother’s lips
pressed against your perspiring cheekbones. Illness, like life, is a
virus never on sabbatical.