I garden in the soil of a song. 
Walk barefoot through rows
of sheet music, picking strawberries 
from the low notes, peaches 
from the high notes. I feed myself 
a chorus, and for the first time 
in many months, I am full.

But that’s not real, my mind demands,
trusting the seedless machine. 
My mind repeats the newscaster’s 
teleprompted panic. Repeats
the doctor’s doomsday speech. 
There’s no time to not be real, it begs.

I point to my left lung–a satchel full 
of tumors. Point to a pantry full of pills
that haven’t helped, a bed I have
hardly left for weeks.

Is this what you mean by real? I ask.

Yes! my mind screams, frantic
in its mission to make matter 
all that matters.

But how 
is that more real, I say, 
than the first time I was breathless
from holding a stethoscope to my pain 
and hearing the heartbeat of the whole world?

My mind argues like a seasoned lawyer,
all objection and rebuttals. 
But I, an artist, stretch my heart out
into canvas, hand one brush 
to joy and another brush to grief,
grinning as I watch them paint 
the exact same rolling meadow 
the same hue of emerald green.

That isn’t real, my mind insists
as I take off running through
the pasture, stopping only to do 
a cartwheel beside a lonely windmill 
who has always wanted a friend.

I fly up the solemn staircase 
of a billionaire’s lifeless mansion 
to replace the diamonds with raindrops
I found huddled on a leaf of a Birch 
tree beside my home when 
I was nine and a half years old.

It’s not real that you still have those!
my mind protests, as if everything 
that ever was isn’t forever here. 
As if I’m not still a giggling child 
hiding in the place I know my mom will
look first, because I want to be found.

During my CT scan last week
I couldn’t find myself inside of myself
because my mind was louder than I was.
But then I gave up all control, unfurled
like the petals of a pen blooming 
poems on the sterile walls,
for the next worried patient to water.

But that’s not real, my mind contends.
Real is provable. Googleable.

Then google this, I say, —

The chemo that kept me alive,
the chemo cold men in white coats 
take credit for, is sourced from the bark 
of the Pacific Yew tree and was first 
discovered for its healing properties 
by Two-Spirit Indigenous people
in the Pacific Northwest, who were guided
by the voices of moss and the mist.

Is that real? my mind asks. 

I don’t see the point in answering
because my mind can’t hear the language 
spoken by the moss, has never 
picked the sweetest fruit from the saddest note 
of a song and planted every seed 
to feed the joy of those to come.

What’s the worst thing that ever happened 
to you? my mind asked me long ago.

I said, Not believing in what I couldn’t yet see.

What’s the best thing that ever happened
to you? my mind asked me long ago.

I said, Learning that you are not me. 

Read the poem on Andrea’s newsletter, Things That Don’t Suck