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Thanatophobia

Xiao Gan

Medullary carcinoma. Emphysema.
Random flips of the encyclopedia always lands me on those two terms.
They imitate the complicated, despairing, diseases of this world for which there is no
        cure.
Will I ever have to say them aloud?

In the taxi, my grandmother lays flesh rags over my hands.
She tells me she will see me the next time she comes to visit me here,
across the Indian Ocean, far later and behind the migratory birds of the winter,
to an island far removed from her backyard radishes and simple breakfast cereal.
We visit every five years, but then I would have been recast. Metamorphosed.
She will tell me I am taller when we greet each other past the immigration counter.
The evergreen’s maturity, flowering daisies in soil hands
But her, there will be another crack in her bones, spiraling aches,
confusing words spoken like insurance wills probate

Just then the taxi conveniently decides to play a news clipping about MH-370, AA-587,
then more tips on how to avoid locust plagues heart diseases Alzheimer's.
On the way to the airport we both try to sit in the silence of the expressway,
a slowly sinking bridge, a renovating Mariana trench.
I scream to the crow watching us, ‘when will tomorrow stop for her?’
Even the devil is uninterested. He waves me off, tells me,
stroke, maybe. Tripping over a pebble, maybe.
And definitely while you are playing at the amusement park not looking backwards.

Okay fine then I’ll just tell him:
I’m scared.
Scared of the vacant hollowness of the other side

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