Robert Okaji - Stone Circle Review

I Laugh

The Editor2026-06-10T19:08:52-04:00November 3, 2024|

by Robert Okaji

Because I say to myself I’m going to
miss her so much, when no, I won’t miss any-
one, because I’ll be dead. I won’t be thinking.
Or feeling, or remembering. I simply
won’t be. So I’m grieving now, well in advance
(I hope), though the drugs quit on me and my knee
swells and the lead balloon in my chest expands
even as I write and eat cookies because
everything else tastes like sawdust. I miss her
so much now, even though she’s here, more present
than anyone, ever. Because I won’t be.

Robert Okaji served without distinction in the U.S. Navy, and once owned a bookstore. Sixteen months ago he was diagnosed with late stage metastatic lung cancer. Thanks to the wonders of modern science, he still lives in Indiana with his wife—poet Stephanie L. Harper, whose poems resonate with emotion and craft—stepson, and cat. His first full-length collection, Our Loveliest Bruises, will be published by 3: A Taos Press in fall 2024, and his poetry may be found in Only Poems, Big Windows Review, Verse Daily, Broadkill Review, Vox Populi, Taos Poetry Journal, wildness, and at his blog, O at the Edges.

Trigger Alert

The Editor2026-06-10T20:52:55-04:00November 4, 2023|

by Robert Okaji

Trigger alert: I’m dying. I am dying,
and nothing will change that, not philosophy,
not chemicals, not will. Not even the sky
nor the ground it beguiles somewhere out of sight.
Consider the horizon as loneliness,
as line curved through eyeshot and smoke. As nexus
of sun and diagnosis. Of relief and
slumber, pain and my wife’s smile when she kisses
me goodnight. I am dying, and I cannot
picture the universe without me, or me,
nonexistent, bodiless, simply not there.

Robert Okaji was recently diagnosed with late stage metastatic lung cancer. He lives, for the time being, in Indiana, and his work has appeared in Threepenny Review, Vox Populi, Big Windows Review, and elsewhere. Robert is on X @robertokaji.