When I was first diagnosed, I found that writing poetry (in the loosest sense of the word) was a useful way to process some of the strange stuff that happens when you have a disease munching on your brain and spine. After a couple of years I stopped as the stories I wanted to tell began forming themselves in prose instead.
National Poetry Day got me thinking though and I returned to a poem that wrestles with a thought I continue to wrestle with: what happens in that infinitesimal moment when relapse turns to remission?
For those of us with Relapsing Remitting MS, there must be a split second – a moment in time – when a shift happens, a switch activates, and our bodies begin, slowly, to repair; that moment when our former ‘healthy self’ begins to return, to reassert.
A while back, when I was tussling with this thought, the following words started tumbling around in my head.
Lazarus
she returns
a summer lighter
a century wiser
I try
to spy deception
in tungsten eyes
she looks for clues
in mirrors
edged blue
orbiting
closer
we collide
ink-black
she glances
my skin
sinking
I stroke
this threadlike ghost
Sunshine Scot 