Nightshift

3:21. 

am. 

Still wide awake.

Well, technically I did sleep,

for nigh on two hours. 

Nothing woke me up 

and that’s what’s worrying.

My heart beats with the night,

but my head spins a little.

Perhaps it’s a tumour which prevents

my brain from producing melatonin.

Or a blood vessel popped in my brain

and like the sun exploding

I’ll realise it in 8 minutes and change.

3. 2. 1.

Countdown to death.

Missing a zero, suspended,

cliffhanger to zilch.

Or perhaps I’m supposed

to read it backwards

so now it’s a countup

to the number of cancers I have.

Or will have and survive.

Or I should read 32 I am,

but that’s even more mysterious

than anything that’s ever happened to me. 

32 what?

3:59am.

Seriously, I need to sleep.

I have a presentation tomorrow,

which technically we are already. 

I took a pill for the migraine

but I think it’s a grade 4 glioblastoma.

Has to be. Hurts really bad.

At 4 sharp, it’s going to be

death o’clock for me.

Pft, gone, ready to be dissected,

every inch inside and out examined

so they finally find what’s wrong.

Cartography of a thousand and one ailments.

4:00am.

Doom downloading: 50%.

Life on pause because 

there is no broadband.

We have to taste that irony at least once.

Or perhaps I’m already dead.

No presentation, no work, no life.

Silver linings of sorts.

But tons of silverer linings:

no more wildguessing my illnesses,

no groceries to be done,

no fretting over what to cook for lunch,

no awkward social interactions.

The perks of being dead.

Also: let’s not forget the silence.

4:41am

Waiting three more minutes

because that’s oddly satisfying.

Brain overdrive though,

I might never fall asleep, ever again.

First case of its kind.

They’ll find I have a totally different brain

than anyone on this planet

and they’ll slice it up and conserve it in formol

for future generations to unravel the mystery.

I blame the tumour, it’s now out of control. 

I might even start seeing the tunnel

behind my closed eyelids

like this one time in that motel

when I think I didn’t sleep

but simply passed out from sheer exhaustion 

and right before I saw the light,

this bright beam of light, at the end of a tunnel.

If only I could see instead

the night at the end of the tunnel.

5:00am

I might as well get up

and power through that day

with tumblers of coffee

and a sign hanging from my neck

that says: “Dying from brain cancer,

please remove when dead.”

5:12am

Somebody take a hammer

and knock me asleep.

Migraine abated, I think,

even though there’s no way to be sure,

the bastard pops up again

the minute you let your guard down.

Sunlight filters through the blinds.

Birds are waking up too.

I am so not ready to start that day.

Brain, let me grab another hour of sleep, please,

and I’ll make sure you get a scan

as soon as we get home on Friday.

One more hour, just to have the impression

that I had two nights’ sleeps in one.

Just so this day which hasn’t really started yet

gets to be one hour shorter.

That I could live with.