High-Risk Disease: Neither Here Nor There

A psychic shuttlecock

batted back and forth

over the same familiar court.

Flying straight on a hurried path,

losing momentum, then rerouted abruptly

in an entirely new direction.

So my mind scatters.

Darting toward a forbidden future

too dark and murky to grasp.

Flashing to perils past,

still smoldering with sadness.

Pausing in the uncertainty of the present.

Distracted and preoccupied,

my mind refuses to stay

in this moment or any other.

It wanders and wobbles.

Neither here nor there, it is everywhere.

It dreads the next procedure,

adrift in the possibilities.

It hopes to live.

It lives to hope.