Neoplasms

Two days before they tell you that you have cancer,
a ranger at Mammoth Cave warns folks not to board the

bus if they have medical issues, because cave walks
can be quite stressful.

You get on the bus.  Two hours later, you quite literally
cross the River Styx.

     It starts as a quark soup.

I am basically
nothing but a complex chemical reaction.

The day they tell you that you have cancer,
You watch the manatees at the Cincinnati zoo

swim in their glass prison, then you stagger right past McDonald's,
you don't eat, you don't pass Go.

     Then the photons start flying.

You can
watch me coalesce,

That's when they start
taking things out of you, pumping the

lethal toxins directly into your bloodstream and  giving you
a free weekly radiation suntan.

You see people getting their mufflers repaired,
scurrying to work, and you wonder why.

     Then atoms and stars form.

see me fizz around and gyrate
for a decade or six,

Sixty-five days after they tell you that you have cancer, you watch the
lunar eclipse, thinking it will be your last.

     One star goes red giant and swallows up the last conscious bacterium           as it frantically swims in a boiling sea.

then you can watch me burn out,
disintegrate into my constituent atoms.

620 days after they tell you that you have cancer, you sit there
watching your heart on TV

with your newly appointed cardiologist friend.  He enthusiastically points
out all the parts that have just died.  It's a helluva show.

     The giant itself is eaten by a ravenous wormhole,
      just one Russian doll inside another.
     
And the coolest part:
you can watch me do it all over again.

2,592 days after they tell you that you have cancer,
you watch yet another lunar eclipse.