It's Not a Fair Request
Ann WJ White


The song reverberates around the soothing sound of music.
People nod and hum along, 
A song of loss, but acceptance.
I will not accept.
My heart beats with a slide, a murmur,
the wall thickens, the prison fights back.
The stenosis of my heart
bleeds, can't hold the blood,
Must be caught out and removed.
The only way to survey is not
to give into the pain,
but to fight it.
To growl and mask a face like
a wild animal. 
I can't let niceness win.
This is my life.
A open heart surgery.
A chest opened, without the ability
of medication instead.
At the moment that the calcium 
in my valve fixes itself shut like glue,
I am dead. 
I won't celebrate that.

My brain fuddles around, killing itself.
It takes aim at the immune cells
the T and B cells.
There is a riot in my brain.
If a virus or bacteria
scoots in along the white matter, if it 
remembers the formulation in the DNA.
The white blood cells will leapt
forming a battle against 
anything that doesn't belong, even stress.
Stranger danger!
The brain will attack medications
that have similar DNA.
I can't sit and listen 
to a healthy punk tell me
how grateful I must be.
I fight for every day of my life.
I can't be healed with medicines,
they can only try to shut it down until
the next circus that my body brings forward.
It's called Multiple Sclerosis,
with a pandemic, virus, stress or germ
my brain can be shredded. 
A puzzle torn, ripped, unfixable.
No soft delicate feelings making me nice.
I won't die, not by ignorance or 
foolishness. I'll fight for my life.
Then I'll write a song.