DISEMBARK.
Sometimes I inwardly remark
that I would like to disembark
from this journey that I’m on
with looking after my colon.
Maybe I should make it plain,
this journey started with great pain,
and with the increase in my strife
I succumbed to the surgeon’s knife.
A stoma was the end result,
which made my pain less difficult,
but set me on this journey where
my life was filled with stoma care.
It did not take me very long
to adjust and string along
with this new path that was made
by that surgeon’s simple blade.
It’s not a route that I sought out
but that’s what illness is about.
We do not choose to go that way
but often we don’t have a say.
For many years I’ve managed to
do the things I needed to do
to control my wayward pooh
and my stoma helped in this rescue.
But now this journey takes a twist
along a pathway that I missed,
because before it was so long
that not much really had gone wrong.
Now, it feels, I’m at that start,
where things will start to fall apart
so, the control that I once had
is being lost and turning bad.
This makes emotions turn quite dark,
which makes me wish to disembark.
B. Withers 2023
