Lab Results Friday Evening After Five
A little lump—nothing to note—a little
cough, nothing to ping
anything in a world so askew
already. You cannot feel decline
moment by moment but it catches
up with you all at once, the way
a shadow blooms into focus,
sharp and all-consuming
within the crowd. A quickening
that stops your heart and starts
it again. The day you outlived
your mother so long gone,
the day you dared
to think it a game you beat. You
go on and on in a mad world
that lets cellular things hide
and sneak in with other monstrous
things. Running through
exhaustion and the weight
of the day-to-day. Turning
to some perceived light after
a long slog. Your doctor running
labs just in case, never
knowing the answer will
catch you all alone one
Friday night, where you
watch the streetlamps flicker
through trees,
afraid to shut your eyes.
A Pushcart nominee, Sharon Lee Snow earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of South Florida in Tampa. Her award-winning short stories, creative nonfiction, and poetry have been published Griffel, Glassworks, The Concrete Desert Review, Underwood, South 85, Typehouse, Gulf Stream, Bridge Eight, Finding the Birds, and other journals. She works as a university instructor. Connect with her on Twitter and Instagram @sharonleesnow and her website www.sharonleesnow.com