Her Name Was Ally

Her Name Was Ally

People can’t always tell when others are dying.

They picture the dying as pale, sickly, and immobile.

They imagine wheelchairs and hospital beds.

They think that the dying are tethered to life by tubes.

People can’t always tell when others are dying.

I Am Dying…

My mornings consist of

Throw up, Six Pills, Throw up again,

Get dressed, and go to school.

You see, I don’t get a time frame for my death.

I don’t get to chart out the last six months of my life

on a calendar that says,

Today spend time with your family. Tomorrow go skydiving.

At eight years old I was told,

You could live for fifty years or five days.

At thirteen,

You will never have children.

At fifteen,

Write your will because you never know...

So I did.

At fifteen I had to decide who would take possession of my things when I inevitably passed on.

It was easier than you’d think.

I had already resigned myself to dying.

At fifteen I learned that it’s better to have one real friend

Than one-hundred “almost-friends.”

So I only had one real friend.

Her name was Ally.

And Ally didn’t care that I was dying.

We’re all dying.

If I based my friendship on immortality,

I would be pretty lonely.

Ally understood more than most,

That love must be the foot you put forward first.

She said, Try.

Ally showed me that life is not about playing it safe.

It’s not about hiding in the background as if you can avoid the filth of society.

It’s supposed to be dirty…

You’re supposed to scream until your voice sounds like a bowl of rice krispies.

Use the cracking and rasping as proof that you tried.

Run as hard and as fast as you can for as long as you can.

Run until your legs give way to arthritis,

And after that, continue to crawl…

You have to remember that,

It’s supposed to hurt.

And if by the end of this you haven’t hurt me,

You didn’t try hard enough.

Ally lived more in a single moment than I had in a year.

Had a light so bright that the moon was jealous,

And with eyes recycle bin blue, she saw broken things as if she could fix them.

Ally was proof that

People can’t always tell when others are dying.

I never thought that she would die before me…

They said,

There’s no family to speak of, so love is next in line.

She has an aneurysm sitting just above her left temple.

There’s nothing else we can do.

At sixteen I learned that it’s so much harder to deal with someone else’s death.

So I sucked in a deep breath and remembered,

It’s supposed to hurt.

At eighteen,

I just want to let you know that I am still trying, Ally.