Fair-Weather Prayer by Stacey Haas

We looked like angels
in our hospital gowns,
waiting on doctors like fathers
to save us from ourselves.

Wanting to be freed
from whatever encrypted disease
was our genetic destiny,
we put faith in a savior
to change it.

We sat on bended knee
with bated breath for a savant
in a white coveted coat to come,
but he's in and he's out
in a matter of minutes,
while we're left with a feeling
like we missed it.

We get the pills without a problem
like a script without a story,
scrawled in hurried cursive
we weren't meant to understand.

This is treatment without reason
leaving half the time
not knowing what is wrong.

When confronting
the unmendable by medicine
we're taught to pray for miracles,
to trust in the invisible
as if death were avoidable.

But the truth is we've collected a debt
and nothing is owed us but a bed
of worm turned earth to go to.
Does that scare you?

The dividing cancer cell is not evil
rather, so adept at it's own growth
it forgets the confines of it's host.

Humans should understand that the most.
Think of everything we've outgrown;
toys, countries, taxes, kings.

When reminded of mortality
we make a steeple of our hands
and whisper promises
we will not keep.