Ghost chemo

It’s hard to describe.

One day your are fine, not quite the same (age will do this to you), then bam, something like a steamroller has massaged your body during the night, making sure it reversed out of the bedroom the way it came.

Tiny areas of your body, previously unknown to you, now throb with soreness.

Imagine the handle of a screwdriver. Something is screwing its handle into your hipbone. Just as the pain eases, or you get used to it (it’s hard to know the difference), the prodding begins in the side of your opposite buttock. This also eases, just at the point that your knees become jelly. And your neck. Who thought holding up a head could be so much work!

Now imagine the blades of a pair of nail scissors. Somehow they have found their way inside your kidneys. It’s hard to tell if they are trying to cut their way in, or out. The jabbing reminds you of your children, when they used to nag you for biscuits. Today the needles are silent.

You close your laptop and crash out under a blanket. It is two in the afternoon. There will be other days, other afternoons, you tell yourself. A robin sings goodnight as your eyelids begin to fall.