The Two Kinds of Decay

The Point and the Ray

I grew used to being sick and looking forward to recovering.

Then I grew used to being well again for a short while, knowing I’d be sick again sooner or later.

Then I grew used to having no prognosis at all, because with a mysterious disease, all things are possible.

My existence shrank from an arrow of light pointing into the future forever to a speck of light that was the present moment. I got better at living in that point of light, making the world into that point. I paid close attention to it. I loved it very much.

And then one day, my life was a ray again, and the point was gone.

I tried to find that point after the latest, longest remission began.

I thought of the point as a moment in spacetime where I could be free of all memory and all desire — a point that existed apart from everything before and after it.

Sometimes I can feel myself getting close to finding the thing in spacetime I lost by getting well.

I didn’t start writing this until my body made another decision.

The day before the decision I wrote, Can’t catch my breath all morning because of a wildness in my body that is like birds flying me toward his body.

The next day I wrote, I resisted as long as I could. A narrator must keep a safe distance from the story, but a lyric speaker must occupy the lyric moment as it’s happening. Or so it seems to me at this moment.

A crow stands outside my window all day, reminding me of the best thing about my life — that it ends.

I think my body’s decision shone a light on the memory that once my body steered me. Or that it steers me.