The Scar (Wake Up, Wake Up)

Sometimes I write poetry. This past Saturday morning I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and couldn't go back to sleep (this rarely happens). I got up and went to sit in silence for a little while. When I got done, I intended to go back to sleep but something in me noticed my scar and I pondered it a little while in the mirror. It ain't pretty. I laid back down but the first few lines of this poem kept trying to write itself in my head so I got up and went to work on finishing it.

There are so many things that happen when you receive a life-threatening diagnosis. I'm still wrestling with all the repercussions and evidence of the struggle appears at the oddest times. Sometimes I fear I am not yet fully awake...

The Scar (Wake Up, Wake Up)

The scar is so ugly I can only bear to look at it

In the half light between dark night

and dawn of a new day

where it becomes a metaphor:

I have been opened and rendered able

to receive. Somewhere in the distance

a siren wails and now my scar is evidence of life’s brevity

while a bird sings sweetly outside the window

reminding me to wake up and live.

How quickly, how slowly, we move from life to death;

from death to life; from mourning to morning.

It is the scar that calls me to life; to morning.