Choice

1.

 

some things, I knew,

                              were beyond choosing:

 

 

didu — grandmother — wilting

                                        under cancer’s terminal care.

 

 

mama — my uncle’s — mysterious disappearance —

                                      ventilator vibrating, severed

silently, in the hospital’s unkempt dark.

 

 

an old friend’s biting silence — unexplained —

   promised loyalties melting for profit

                            abandoning long familial presences of trust.

 

 

devi’s jealous heart      misreading emails

                                                     hacked carefully under cover,

her fingernails ripping                             

unformed poems, bloodied, scarred —

                                           my diary pages weeping wordlessly —

my children aborted, my poetry breathless forever.

 

 

2.

 

these are acts that enact themselves, regardless —

    helpless, as I am,

torn asunder permanently, drugged, numbed.

 

 

strange love, this is —

                                           a salving: what medics and nurses do.

i live buddha-like, unblinking, a painted vacant smile —

                            one that stores pain and painlessness —

someone else’s nirvana thrust upon me.

 

 

some things I once believed in

                                                        are beyond my choosing —

choosing is a choice unavailable to me.