Shadows and Ghosts and Angels

Shadows and Ghosts and Angels

The CT scan is in the shape
of those space portals
that pop up in Sci-Fi movies
and always made me
half laugh and cry—
the gantry, the shape of a donut,
the couch, a coffin.

I am lying inside the donut,
wearing the noise-canceling
headphones they gave me,
resisting the urge to eat it
and keeping my body perfectly still.
The audio prompt, antiseptically,
reminds me twice
to stop fidgeting and obey.

Twenty minutes before,
they injected me
with a contrast dye
that is giving me the warm fuzzies
when the machine is activated—
a cruel joke of the designer
which makes me think
my body is ascending to heaven
while the demon screech
of the CT acknowledges
that I am still living in
the hell of the moment.

A brilliant light
scans my torso
while the halo angels
in nurses’ scrub
in the adjacent
control room
squint at the images
for cloud tumors.

They see
a lot of rubble,
a few
shadows and ghosts
of past surgeries
and scans—

nothing,
as the report
announces
in an almost
overlooked email
two days later—
that allows me to
let out the breath
I’ve been
holding
since then—

but normal aging
processes,
slowly
leading
to the
grave.