A Better Question

A poem about getting to the heart of things

I have MS, and while it’s currently “mild,” it can still be debilitating. Because of this, I don’t work. I tried to keep working when I first got sick, but even my relatively easy job as a receptionist soon became overwhelming. Even though I know my reasons for not working are valid, I still carry a great deal of shame around my lack of productivity and contributions to society.

The other day, I met some new people. They asked the question that everyone asks when they meet someone new: What do you do? I explained my situation, and they were gracious, pointing out that I’m making the best of a bad situation. Even so, I still felt that shame, that feeling that I am less than. It brought to mind this poem I wrote a few years ago, so I’m sharing it again here. I’m sharing it to change the conversation.

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A BETTER QUESTION

What do you do?
The first question, the first
opportunity to reveal yourself. 

What do you do? 
Who are you?
What makes you worthy
of inhabiting our civil 
society? What do you contribute?

I don’t do much of anything
according to my paycheck. But
what I lack in income, I make up for
in brain lesions, the scars left behind
from self-inflicted wounds. My body
thinks it’s protecting me. It doesn’t
realize it’s the enemy. 

What do I do?
I rest. I wake up exhausted
from fighting this never-ending
war. I go slowly, a creature of
small movements creeping
across the battlefield.

What is my value?
I pull the quiet from the ether
and weave it into this plane. I teach
whoever wants to learn. I transform
life into a lucid dream of possibility.

My worth is in my being. My existence 
is a love letter to all those who are 
lost, broken, and lonely. I am
a song played on repeat until
the lyrics come alive, knit themselves
into armor to protect against
the world’s expectations.

What do you do?
Actually, I don't care.
A better question would be,
how do you live? How do you
breathe life into your soul? Tell me
something fascinating, something more beautiful
than the balance of your bank account.
Show me the fire that burns within
you. Tell me who you are.

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WEEKEND POTPOURRI:

• Currently on repeat: (I’ve been smoking Nica Libres at dusk while listening to Nica Libres At Dusk)

• A(nother) poem:

A STORY ABOUT THE BODY

By Robert Hass

The young composer, working that summer at an artist’s colony, had watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost sixty, and he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she made amused and considered answers to his questions. One night, walking back from a concert, they came to her door and she turned to him and said, “I think you would like to have me. I would like that too, but I must tell you that I have had a double mastectomy,” and when he didn’t understand, “I’ve lost both my breasts.” The radiance that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity—like music—withered very quickly, and he made himself look at her when he said, “I’m sorry. I don’t think I could.” He walked back to his own cabin through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the bowl—she must have swept them from the corners of her studio—was full of dead bees.

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