The More Minutes I Find Prismatic, the Less Dark My Attic

When I turned thirty, I lamented to an older friend that I had not yet married or started a family. I whined, I am ready for my life to begin. He asked me something I’ve not forgotten, ‘Have you considered that this is your life?’ Always goaling forward, I did not adopt this viewpoint. I was the ultimate checklist crosser off-er, the what’s-next discontented.

It took a cancer crisis to develop internal infrared vision and see life in the dark. Life doesn’t begin after certain things happen. Life won’t start again when I’m well. It’s happening right now no matter my waiting for an ‘all clear’ or a death knell.

I would be wise to notice the brilliance in motion: an ekphrastic rainbow framing the mountain-bordered lake, a wisp of blond hair falling onto my husband’s face, a pair of bald eagles circling thermals above my head, and sunshine illuminating the black pearls in my chest.

I do not know what the box of survival chance holds. Future focus deprives me of this moment. Should my life be shortened, I don’t want to miss my everyday birth presents. I want to live the happiest I can now even when not knowing that everything is going to be okay. And I need only laugh deeply to define what’s essential—spontaneous eruptive joys that rinse my mind of uncertainty and radiate worry within me.

©️ 2024 Laura E. Garrard

Laura E. Garrard is a multiple myeloma thriver and published author living in the Northwest. Her poetry and prose have appeared in journals like The Madrona Project, Amethyst, Silver Birch, TulipTree Review, and others.