A Doctor's Visit

I spoke to my doctor about this affliction I
have. What is it, what is this thing, I asked,
that is contorting my insides, closing my gut
in on itself, distorting my organs by hollowing
them out until they are made up of nothing
but black ash.

It is a disease, she relayed, that is just beginning
in your belly, but is also creeping its way up into your
eyes and mind - you will see through a spotted
strained lens slit with deception and misperception.
You will think in circular fragments, which will
spread and mutate and continue to breed
enraged amoeba inside you.

She said that the amoeba would slowly fill out my
lungs. So that when I inhale, I will for a second
have the illusion of breathing, but I'll never be able
to exhale. Instead, I'll become a swallower of the
earth. It's pain. It's suffering too.

Slowly, it will make its way to my heart. Freezing
every sinewy tendon, so that each beat will become
tighter and every cord shorter and tauter. I asked her if
one day it would stop, and there would be a reprieve.
She said no. It wouldn't stop. At its worse the heart is
going to shrivel up, but somehow it will still sustain
life. Miraculous really, she mused.

I left hollower than when I arrived.
Noticing the cords shorten -
Even in death life wins.