November Poem a Day: Day 11

Robert Lee Brewer's prompt today was "No One Wants. . . "  (fill in the blank).


I know I said I wouldn't worry about making these very rough drafts into poetry until after the month was over.  I hadn't planned on sharing/inflicting these messy pages on anyone, but this one knocked at my door this morning.  It's still messy.  Still first draft.  Still needs a lot of work.

Thanks for Asking

No one wants a pelvic
ultrasound.  Not even
when you're doubled
up, writhing on the floor
because your left
ovary insists on spewing
out another egg, even though
you're forty seven, two
hulking teenage boys
once emerged from your body
and your parents are busy
dying, two thousand miles away.
No one wants to think
about funerals, packing up
the house after they're gone,
calling Good Will to salvage
what can't be loved
or shoved in an uninsulated attic.
No one wants a c-six
radiculopathy, numbness
and pain forced together
like oil and water under
pressure, not quite mixing,
not quite moving their separate
ways.  And no one, absolutely
no one wants to be around a whiner,
so when you ask me
how things are, I just
smile.
Thanks.
I'm fine.
Really.