When you grow up, you have to be ready for news
usually information you don’t really want.
Unfortunately, there is no age for growing up
it can be 50,
25
16
9,
or after a few months of breath
when your cries go unanswered by the someone you know should be there.
It’s the moment when you get the knowing
it slinks into your heart, wraps silky waves around it then bites
Etching a finish line into your consciousness
illuminating chinks in their armor that you’d never have seen…
until they were written on hospital charts
the incessant beeping of the monitors of life
marking vitality with every bleat.
It’s the knowing that you want to shut your eyes to
curl up in a ball and run away from…
but it runs after you,
and it won’t stop.
There’s nothing you can do to escape this knowing
it always catches up to you
on the day of full black.
The some things you can cushion are
the telling and
the living that happens
in between
the many moments
of knowing.
Caia Rose 