Clean: Part 2

A Serialized Poem on Grief and Chronic Illness

In August of 2023, fresh off my 35th birthday and on a god damned Tuesday, I was diagnosed with MS. This series is a serialized poem I created in the days and weeks following that diagnosis. It is an immediate and uncensored exploration of grief. I am not finished. Maybe I never will be.

Photo by Grace Ho on Unsplash

Part 2

Seven days later
I sit across from a neurologist.
His pants are too big and 
his shirt is untucked
And he’s so
Sloppy
And I can tell he came here with the full purpose of
Not believing me.
But suddenly, 
sitting here in this room,
With the evidence in his hands
He finds that he does.
We both shake our heads.
No one can seem to stop. 

“This is an aggressive presentation,”
And in my head I imagine a courtship dance, 
A ridiculous bird trying to prime his apathetic mate 
for something she finds inevitable, 
if perhaps a little boring.
He says,
“You don’t seem upset.”
I don’t have an answer.

At 4 pm the next day
I’m sitting 
A tiny room in the infusion center of the hospital
Waiting to get the first 
1000mg of steroids
Injected. 
“Infused” they say,
Like it won’t wreck my body for
Days.


There have been immunizations
And blood tests and pitying clucks from 
Nurses who say, 
“You’re so young.”

I want to shake them all. 
Scratch them.
I, blessedly, keep the trapped lion in my chest silent. 
Waiting for the right thing to fight.
He won’t find one for a while.
The check in room has a whiteboard
Ominously demanding that I “stay strong”
In some incredibly half-assed bubble letters
And I’m staring at it when Adam, the check-in guy wraps up his last task and says,
“alright,
You’re still Rachel, right?”

This stirs something. I think I am. I will try to remember when I leave.
But right now, every minute he chats I am another minute late and this is what will decide if I can still be Rachel. These tiny minutes. This coming when I said I would. 

I go straight from the hospital to get my children 
Then To the fair.
I promised.
I overdraw my bank account 
but I say yes to everything. I have to. 
It’s a compulsion.
It feels like clinging to the final threads
Of a freedom that is slipping away.

I feel like vomiting, I go on the rides anyway. I
 let my daughter play for a goldfish 
and when the Backstreet Boys come on at the booth I sing and dance. 
The carnival worker giggles at me
She slips a ping pong ball into a cup 
just as my daughter takes her last shot.

she makes eye contact with me and shouts “winner, winner.” 
We carry that damn goldfish all night.
We make our way to something that spins. 
And halfway through when there is only the swinging world and my daughter next to me
When gravity has abandoned us, 
she looks me dead in the eyes and says,
“Oh. This is alright?”
I take a breath,
The spinning feels just like
Everything else.
It all feels the same. 
“Yeah, baby.” I say,  “It’s alright.”