Morbidly Pre-cancerous on a Christmas Eve (poem)

“Love is having someone to watch you die.”
death cab for cutie

Some day I will get cancer and die from it
like every other member of my family.
I will shrink to nothing in hospice care
and hollow and whoever makes up
my friends and family will come and murmur
things about me out of earshot. I will choose
not to hear them, anyway, whoever they will be.
My loved ones change as predictably as the seasons
which is less cliché now that global warming
has jilted the ecological forces that spin
this planet. I don’t know who will bother
to hold my hand as I struggle to breathe,
struggle to set myself free from this
terrible earth. Even my best friends
abandon their posts with little notice
every once in awhile and I shrug
my pre-cancerous shoulders
and find new people to share in all
my outrageousness. I am too brash,
perhaps, too demanding, too demeaning, too quick
to turn cold and leave.

What if no one
longs to be near me when the cancer strikes?
What if they all
come back just to let me go again?

Someday when I am diagnosed
with cancer, I will tell no one
so I won’t find out which is true and I won’t
be defeated by another silent night.