The minute the doctor says colon cancer you hardly hear anything else. He says other things, something about something. Tests need to be done, but with the symptoms and family something, excess weight, something about smoking, all of that together means something something something something, his voice a dumb hum like the sound of surf you know must be pounding, but the glass window that has dropped down between you allows only a muffled hiss like something something. He writes a prescription for something, which might be needed, he admits. He hands you something, says something, says goodbye, and you say something. In the car your wife says something something and something about dinner, about needing to eat, and the doctor wanting tests doesn’t mean anything, nothing, and something something something about not borrowing trouble or something. You pull into a restaurant where you do not eat but sit watching her eat something, two plates of something, blurry in an afternoon sun thick as ketchup, as you drink a glass of something-cola and try to recall what the doctor said about something he said was important, a grave matter of something or something else.
—James Valvis
Rights & Access
James Valvis, “Something.”
Reprinted by permission of the author.
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James Valvis
James Valvis (1969- ) is the author of the collection How to Say Goodbye (2011). His poetry also appears in Ploughshares, New York Quarterly, and Atlanta Review. Valvis currently lives in Issaquah, Washington.