How Long

“So, have they told you how long they think you’ve got?”

Gun loaded, trigger pulled, gun shot.

It’s a common question, I should mention

This Doctor’s not so out of line

He’s following convention.

But for me, this peering into what may be, my death, my end, my mortality,

It feels ongoing and endless.

I’ve sailed past every bench mark cast in my direction

So have they told me how long they think I’ve got?

I lie, I tell him ‘no’, and hope he’ll let the matter drop.

But he seems to think I need a little push, a little shove,

To think about being dead.

“Come now, really?” He says.

I shake my head

“They haven’t said.”

Another lie

These days I seem to bullshit more and more

Because years and numbers have been with me since I was small

So much that outliving expectations has become a kind of sport

But now I’ve sailed so far past that initial guess

It seems laughable to indulge the numbers that are left

“But don’t you want to know?” He asks.

I’ll grant him this, he stays on task.

So I relent

I tell him years, averages, have been thrown about all the time

As if predicting a patient’s death is fine

And not at all like fucking with our minds.

You see, in the future, I believe, questions such as these

Calculating patient life expectancies

Will be seen as the anachronistic devils they are

All curses and spells

All death knells

These morbid predictions

Can lead you into stubborn resistance

Or send you into existential decline

Depression, rejection

End of life subjection.

It’s rough.

So I don’t like to think about it much

But I do

I think about it all the time

It’s always lurking there in the back corners of my mind.

I go to sleep and I dream about it.

I wake up in the night and I scream about it

Sometimes it seems I can’t live without it.

So, how long?

Some days I think I’m done

But some days I think I’ll outlive everyone.