Till I Hear The Very Ash

I achieved a certain cancer of the bladder. As it raged within me, dripping its contaminated blood from stalactite nodules, I continued smoking even as I filled up porcelain piss bowls with endless streams of blood. Coincidentally, at the same time, my cancer of the bladder was an absolute coincide with a load of shit on my kidneys. What shit? Like barnacles, apparently. One day they will kill me.

Of my night or two in the hospital I was surrounded by the world’s oldest men who creaked and croaked throughout all days and ceaseless fucking nights, vowing, as they often vowed, that the end of their days would be the best days of the rest of their lives. They had cornflakes for their tea. They had, moreover, the nerve to gasp when I told them about the pissing of the blood. They set to work with their tired cemetery eyes.

When I got home from the hospital I was glad, for a time, not to be dead. I was pleased, also, that the young people across the street (having somehow found out about my newly shortened life) had the decency to keep the volume of their music right down to a minimum. What more could I fucking ask for?