Trigger Alert
Robert Okaji
Trigger alert: I'm dying. I am dying,
and nothing will change that, not philosophy,
not chemicals, not will. Not even the sky
nor the ground it beguiles somewhere out of sight.
Consider the horizon as loneliness,
as line curved through eyeshot and smoke. As nexus
of sun and diagnosis. Of relief and
slumber, the pain in my wife's smile when she kisses
me goodnight. I am dying, and I cannot
picture the universe without me, or me,
nonexistent, bodiless, simply not here.
"Trigger Alert" first appeared in Stone Circle Review. I wrote the poem about four months after receiving a diagnosis of late stage metastatic lung cancer, a terminal illness. It's one thing to be told you're dying, and another to admit to yourself that your being is indeed finite, that one day, not far off, you'll no longer smell the morning coffee, you'll not feel your wife's body next to yours in bed, you won't cheer for the inept Dallas Cowboys, you won't do anything, you will not be anything, you simply will not exist.
ROBERT OKAJI has late stage metastatic lung cancer, which he finds terribly annoying. His poetry may be found in Threepenny Review, Vox Populi and other venues.