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.