25 Years of Successful Diabetic Care! Deserves a Poem!

In January was the 25th anniversary of my diagnosis of what used to be called juvenile diabetes, now called Type 1. I'm still healthy!

Diabetes has been a great teacher for me. Here's a poem I wrote a couple of years after the diagnosis. It's published in my book from Wesleyan University Press called The Transparent Body, which you can order from my website http://www.lisabmusic.com/cds_books.html .

For the Wordless Body

Mute

the muscle constricts with thirst.

The scent of citrus in the urine,

sugar leaking

into a film across the eyes.

Morning fills the windowpane,

a lit rectangle to be hungry in. I hurry

past buildings, counting out streets,

a self with words

and a hollowing silence of cells.

Language punctures

the skin.

Slimmer than a pen

the syringe shoots the insulin.

The sweetness of tangerines

lingers in the bloodstream. The injection

combusts it into strength and heat.

Body, christened again

you burn too well, flushed

as an infant and shaking for food.

A frantic mother, I bend to you.

At night I fake the bravado

of a teenage boy pinching

a girl's bare leg,

the needle poised above my thigh.

For years you absorbed what I fed you,

then denied.

Now you try to refuse

the sweet essence that keeps us alive.

So I am vigilant
for the sake of eyesight and limbs,

grateful to have seen this particular death

and to walk away. I forgive us

this defect, the first defection

to the dissolving silence

trailing me like a cloak.

It falls from my shoulders

when my arms rise, awkward

and bare, a child's A

against the light.

copyright 1989 Lisa Bernstein