Of All Edges

So, I think I'll save the analysis of this poem for another day.

Of All Edges

Month after month
Everything played out
in my mind like
a cancer of thoughts
and I convinced
myself it was terminal.
Then in the Family Room
on a day like every other
I discovered there is a verge
waiting for us with every
step that is taken.

I could only watch
as all of the things
about me that I could detach
easiest teetered on the edge
that I never thought I'd
ever see. Teeter then drop
like stones into the ocean's mouth
below. I can imagine so many
things in life slipping through
my fingers, but never this. And
then I imagined the people I'd heard of;
that Dad had told me about
because he is one of those people.
He was a cliff-dweller.

Two weeks. Hospital visits.
Doctors. Blood tests. X-rays.

"Are you under any kind of stress?"

Doctors. Blood tests. X-rays.
Doctor.

Counsellor.

And these days I'm a scoober
diver and in this arc I'm
salvaging the parts of me
that I treated like air and water.
Mostly my patchwork
body is thrown against the cliffs
by the waves
but there are precious times
in dangerous waters because
sometimes I find exactly
what had been taken and
then I find a little more.

He was a cliff-dweller.
And now me too.