Shelley Ettinger

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Melanomania

I know how I will die. This is assuming it's disease and not
a scaffolding collapse drunk driver dyke basher. Assuming too
it's this disease and not another hiding in the genes biding its time
before first appearance, or lurking in some stranger's lung, or
incubating in a dead stretch of ocean into which will be born
a batch of smelly red roe one of which will grow into a fish
destined for some future fatal dish. Which means I don't know.
It could be anything, and besides, it won't be this. These
deviant cells can't do their dirty work, at least not as long
as I've got a union job with benefits. So the doc snips out
the canker and surrounding skin for a margin beyond,
after which I'm good to go for another six months or so, until
the dermatologic detective spies the next to my eye innocuous
dot, shakes her head, points out the blotchy edge, says
sorry I've got to cut and scalpels me up. I see my skin in
10, 20 years pocked with patches, scars stitches intersecting
wrinkles stretch marks to create a crazy quilt pattern. Which
if I'm smart I'll photograph and market online as folk art, target
home hobbyists seeking original designs to sew a comfy throw
or crochet an I don't know afghan or such. Which posits me
at 80 an entrepreneur, which I will not be is one thing I know.
Not me. See, it all comes down to a decent job, so the doc
can dig the cancer out before it tunnels, before its tendrils
get a chance to wrap round my lymph nodes. A union contract.
Health care clause. Which, what, two-thirds of this world's
people have not. Accident, luck, three times on strike—picketed
in the sun, bad, but held onto benefits, good—take your pick
whatever it is it plops me here on melanomaniac display
for the manicured well-mannered wealthy East Side doc to
shear then suture me up so I can proceed. So I can breathe,
burn energy, learn—something about yearning forward,
something about thrust—so I can go go go until I stop.
Until I die long lives from now of who knows what.
Which I suppose eventually I must.

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Thirty-Six Years

This far along, have we mellowed?
No we have not. And also yes, I guess.
We bicker but it doesn’t last and
sooner or later ends with laughter.
We still rage, though, the both of us.
Make no mistake, we rage, and
if our marching shoes aren’t as
frequently worn, or for as long,
yes you can blame it on age, on how
everything’s become a difficult slog,
she walking with a cane, pain in her
hip, back, leg, and me, my knees
popping out of joint, fingers stiff,
refusing to flex, blood pressure
cholesterol Hashimoto’s gout. We
growl at this state of affairs and
yes now and then at each other as if
it’s anyone’s fault. Which actually it is,
we know we should have exercised
more, eaten healthier, managed stress,
all that crap, and if anyone asks, any
youth say, anyone younger than seventy
years of age, you who slow to smile at
our signs as you rush past, run up to the
barricades, prepare to engage, if you asked
our advice we’d say take care of yourself,
young comrade. You’re all that stands
between the future and fascism, we
need you healthy strong fit alert for
all that’s to come, all that’s already
now begun. It’s the final conflict as the
song says, not to mention the last stand
for human life on Earth, don’t do what
we did, don’t get old and rickety or at least
not for a good long time. Did we smoke
too much pot? Yes and no, we toked a ton
but it was so much less potent then.
Moderation, we wish to wisely counsel,
but even we roll our rheumy old eyes
at that. I say thirty-six years and yes we’ve
been a couple that long, but we’d both been in
the fight for long before we met. She was
heading to Cuba for the tenth or eleventh
time and I was on strike for the third. I
donated to her trip fund and she walked my
picket line. It went on like that. And still does,
if, see above, at an attenuated pace. We’d like to
shake our fists at the sky, shout, now? Now, of
all times, with so much at stake, this is when
our bodies decide to break? Silly futile plaint,
a waste of precious shrinking time, quit yer
whining. Shake it off, gather what’s left of
your wits, gird your shriveled loins, get out
there and do what you do best one more,
as many more as you can possibly manage
times. Rage. Again. Still. Now. While time
remains. Rage on. No stopping now

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Banner Art:
Romaine Brooks, La France Croisée, 1914, Wikimedia Commons