Hello Day (Unbox Me)

Today.

You can’t force me into a rubric.

My face won’t fit the grid.

My bloody leavings can’t be captured

by a chart only a clinician could love.

You shan’t make my soul sing to a worn hospital sheet,

Nor will you route my body into

a visual map

no one can evacuate to.

And even if I can’t quite get back to the dream I started

let me not be boxed in again today

I defy your rights of absolution.

I am.

Above.

And while I may

be a mangled soul at times

full of ashes and leavings

I must tell you that you

can’t rate my heroism

my realness or abate my strangeness

in any rubric

or chop me up in charts

that nothingness can express.

Oh, your grids can’t utter my birthright,

Even if my name is not written very long in this cancerland.

I am.

At Peace.

Now I know what my own long ago lake in the mind will forever echo,

Ripples widening in the tides, every arching forward.

Hello Day.