Posted in response to “Thunder” by Gabrielle Bryden (and in her honor), this piece is part of my forthcoming book, Less Fortunate Pirates: Poems from the First Year Without My Father. In it, I imagine an alternative to the sudden death thrust upon my family – and ruminate on the things of which we were spared.

SPARED

Another one, yesterday. Another sympathetic doctor,
another nurse in tears despite her hardened arteries.

Thus it begins: the planning of a death at some unknown point,
weeks or months or years from now; the slow snuffing out

of life; the pragmatic brother with the carpool spreadsheet,
colored cells, who will take dad to chemotherapy; altered cells;

who will police the family meals and remove all talk of disease;
who will scrub his clothes to rid them of the stains

of hospital waiting rooms and fevered incontinence.
Another one: pancreas. Another one: liver. Who will

be the first to think of medical bills in the unmentionable
context of our dwindling inheritance; who will be strong

enough to see frailty. Another one: lung. Another one:
blood. Who will spend lunch hours hunched over keyboards

reading words like terminal and metastasized and radiation
and the size of a walnut. Who will rationalize the slow burn,

be thankful of goodbyes, be grateful of the order
of finality known long in advance.

© Bryan Borland