My Twilight

Over the past year, since my diagnosis with leukemia, I have begun to doubt that old phrase about "better living, through chemistry." (One of the major chemical companies used it as a slogan on radio and television many years ago.) In the last year, I've had drugs as innocuous as Tylenol and some that would burn a hole through a tile floor pumped into my bloodstream or popped down my pie-hole. A substantial number warn me that they may cause drowsiness, dizziness, stomach upset, sensitivity to sunlight, and a host of other wonderful side-effects.

At times, the compounded effects of these drugs, when hitched to my wagon alongside a healthy dose of fatigue, take me to a twilight state -- not quite awake and not quite asleep. I can hear you, distantly. I can respond to you, but slowly. This is not the comfortable warm fuzziness of day dreaming or the languorous swim back from a nap. This is swimming in Jello with my head below the surface. It is dim world, where I feel connected and detached at the same time. It is not intoxication, it's twilight.

Mick

My Twilight

You sound so yonder when you talk to me,

Your voice, as though descending from a cloud,

Touches my ear as would the distant sea:

Calling, singing, but never very loud.

Heard imperatives, bear no urgency,

Or penetrate my soft, fuzzy cocoon --

In my redoubt from all emergency,

Where nothing needs to happen "very soon."

So, I decide it's best a note to write,

But now my fingers feel so faraway,

And in this growing gloom, I'd need more light

To find a piece of paper anyway.

I will try to remember what you said,

At least, what has not leaked out of my head...

Mick McKellar

May 2011