I'm working on the high hope

And if it all works out you might just see me

Or hear from me in a while

I'm gonna make it across this tight rope

And I'm coming for my prize

No more I'll be waiting 'round while life just passes by

Maybe when our hearts have realigned

Maybe when we've both had some time

I'm gonna see you there

I'm gonna see you there

There

And we can be natural

There

'Cause I've been living in a half light

Not sure which way to turn

Why must a man lose everything to find out what he wants?

But I'm gonna wait until it feels right

And when that time has come

Wild horses won't keep me back from where you've been gone

Maybe when we're both old and wise

Maybe when our hearts have had some time

I'm gonna see you there

I'm gonna see you there

There

We can be natural

There

After all we've seen we can do anything

There

Where your heart is strong

Where we can go and on

There

Where your good times gone

Where we are forever young

There

Where your heart is strong

Where we can't go wrong

There

I wanna see you there

There is a dreadful routine to chemotherapy. My life has been synched to a chemotherapy calendar ever since my diagnosis last year. I have become an expert at predicting when side effects and symptoms will set in. It’s a ghoulish monthly party, and the guests always arrive on time: nausea, vomiting, chills, exhaustion, fever, mouth sores, pain, infections and emergency hospitalisations.

But over the past year, after 28 rounds of treatment, not once have I “won” this secret battle with myself. Despite the clockwork of these cycles (start chemo, wait for symptoms, get sick, go to the hospital), at the start of every new round I convince myself that the outcome will be different. This time, I am going to be stronger than my treatment. This time, my mind will outwit my body. This time.

The cancer world is awash in battle language. Our culture repeats these warlike phrases over and over, like mantras. Cancer books love to traffic in this take-no-prisoners language. They talk about cancer “warriors,” fighting and winning a battle for health. They even encourage patients to visualise chemotherapy as a sea of soldiers entering the bloodstream to fight off the enemy disease. In a lot of ways, it’s an attractive line of thinking. It’s the hero’s journey mixed with the glorification of war. It’s the us-versus-them theme — except in this case it’s us-versus-us. Cancer is one’s own civil war.

My reaction to challenges has always been to fight hard for what I want. I have always prided myself as a “doer.” I like to compete. I like to push myself. I like to win. When I started treatment, my plan was to take on cancer like I’d taken on everything else in my life.

But as much as I “battle,” I haven’t outwitted chemotherapy and its punitive, punctual side effects. As I write this, I am deep-in-the-bone tired, nauseated, and I haven’t left my bed in two full days. It is difficult not to equate sickness or weakness with a feeling of failure. 

I am realising that “beating” cancer isn’t about winning or losing. I wish it were, but it just isn’t.

I’ve decided that the real battle I need to fight is against this win-lose mentality. During the past few months, I’ve been fighting myself in many ways, succumbing to fear and anger about not being able to do what I once could.

But today I’ve decided that my challenge will be to develop a new brand of acceptance. Cancer has taught me that you can’t fight your way out of every problem. The solution is not to charge full speed ahead. It’s counterintuitive, but I try to remind myself that chemotherapy, too, is illogical on its face; you are poisoned in order to be cured.

I realise now that the experience of having cancer is more of a tricky balancing act: being proactive about your medical condition, while simultaneously accepting and surrendering to the fact that, at least for the time being, you can’t change your reality as quickly as you’d like to.

Acceptance is not giving up — far from it. But like a prisoner in handcuffs, you only waste precious energy by trying to wriggle your way free. With cancer, the best way out may just be patience.

I'm growing old

And these goodbyes are breaking my heart

Before I start 

To forget it all

Time erased me.

And i'll rest my head

Like the moon falls through the trees

And it comforts me,

Tells me not to be scared.

And time,

It will not erase me.

For what is time?

It's just passing by.

And we all are born and we fall apart

In endings and starts.

The first time I was hospitalised after my diagnosis — 10 months ago — I was placed in isolation in a drab room where the windows didn’t open. An electronic bracelet was strapped to my wrist, and I was issued a backless hospital gown. A triple-lumen catheter was surgically implanted in my chest to create a central line through which chemotherapy and fluids would be administered. I was all tied up, with both limbs connected to a monitor holding a ring of hanging IV bags.

I dubbed this moment my “incanceration.”

I couldn’t help but feel a bit like an inmate shackled to the schedule of the outside world. I remember guiltily feeling envious, and eventually somewhat resentful, of my visitors when they left my room. “I’m taking a break, and I’ll be back soon,” a nurse would say. I could understand this, but it also made me angry. I, too, desperately needed a break.Over the course of the next 5 weeks, I would have a lot of time to reflect on the hospital experience. Cancer has a way of issuing patients a sudden ticket to the world of otherness. As the chemotherapy took effect, and I Iost my hair, I looked different, I felt different and I even sounded different, as I dragged the beeping monitor with me everywhere I went. For a while I referred to it as “my little friend,” because he never left my side.

The escape fantasies began soon after. When I lost enough weight that I could slip off my electronic hospital bracelet, Lake Washington taunted me from my window. I plotted my escape and dreamed about stepping outside and standing in the rain — even if just for a minute. Fresh air is an amusement ride in the imagination of someone who has been in the hospital for an extended stay.

One day, as I was being wheeled out of the oncology ward for an emergency CT scan, I asked the man pushing my bed what would happen if I tried to escape from the hospital. He laughed but then gave me a serious look and said: “You’ll be in big trouble. Your bracelet will set off an alarm, and the guards will have to come looking for you.”

Finally, on a day when I was feeling relatively stable, I attempted to go through with my plan. I hid my electronic bracelet under my pillow and told the nurse I was going for a short walk. I made it as far as the cafeteria on the ground floor. Then I froze. It was lunchtime, and people swarmed around me, brushing and bumping me. My anxiety mounted as I thought of all the germs in the air. I was having trouble breathing. What if I fell? What if I fainted? Within a few minutes I had returned to my room. Beep, beep. My little friend chirped. Strangely, I felt safe again.

To a cancer patient, the lexicon of the prisoner seems to scream out from everywhere. Your movement is monitored. Decisions as basic as what and when to eat require preapproval from a higher order. Not to mention that chemotherapy feels like a semilethal punishment. The medical staff plays the judge. At any moment, your doctor can issue a sentence: probation, house arrest, extended time in “jail” and, for some, even death row. I’ve never had to appear in court, but I imagine the adrenaline pumps the way it does before a doctor reads your biopsy results.

In retrospect, inventing the term “incanceration” to describe my new diagnosis reflected just how confused, scared and isolated I felt. It’s not that the hospital and my doctors were bad. Far from it. I knew they were the very best, and I felt a deep sense of respect and appreciation for them. But on an irrational level, I also felt wronged by those whom I saw as having “poisoned” me (medical workers who administered the chemotherapy) and by those who encouraged me (family and friends) to think positively. Finding the silver lining sometimes felt like part of the punishment.

I remember asking my favorite nurse, “Why would you ever want to work in an oncology ward?” My question was part curiosity, part self-pity. At that moment, it seemed inconceivable to me that someone would elect to be here.

My nurse told me that she once worked in the spinal cord injury unit, but that after a few months, she couldn’t handle the emotional toll it took on her. She transferred to oncology. “You mean there’s a place worse than here?” I asked. She described the patients who come in (often around my age) and wake up in a hospital bed only to discover that they are paralyzed from the neck down.

I felt ashamed that I had forgotten that I wasn’t the only one whose life had been interrupted by misfortune. I remembered how lucky I was that a cure was even an option for me. That day, as I dragged myself out of bed to go for a walk, I luxuriated in the movement of my legs and the in and out of my breath.

Could I begin to see the hospital not as a prison, but instead as a place of healing that was at times punishing? Could I learn to view my doctors not as judges but as gatekeepers to a long and complex healing process? This much I knew: I was lucky to have my family, friends and a dedicated medical team in my corner.

Still, every time I think I have come to peace with my reality, a new bump in my medical journey can quickly undo any fledgling resolve. But instead of listing all the ways in which having cancer has obstructed my freedom, I am challenging myself to think of cancer as my guru. To remind myself of all I have learned this past year. It’s hard, but I’m trying.

Wait indoors

Slept to waste the time

Until I hear the sound

Of your footsteps climbing

Up the porch as it rains

Trembling voices propogate these rooms

I keep my eyes closed and listen to the trains

Pull the sound

What lingers through this space that fills this house around.

Was I alone in thinking something good?

Water stains

On the pillow where I lay my head

Do they say that I was sleeping

When away do I

Wait shadows climb window fading days

As I trace the light that flickers through the room

Pull the sound

What lingers through this space that fills this house around.

Was I alone in thinking something good?

The grass is screaming long

Midnight cars roll past

I've been chasing your room

While the summer lasts

So count it on your fingers if we got it wrong 

It's because the days have no numbers

If we leave tonight then we leave it all behind

Drinking alphabetically because the beauty's gone all sore

Honey dripping pale of skin while there's bodies underneath

the floor

So count it on your fingers

If we got it wrong it's cause the days have no numbers

If we leave tonight

Then we leave it all behind

Oh why is your hate so addicting 

I wonder where you've been

I don't see you often

I try to feel something for you

But that's all that I can do

Give my shadow to you

Do you ever see me at night 

And does it please you at all 

When you head up the wall

I'd go with you if you asked me to

But we wouldn't get too far

Two strangers in the dark

On the way towards your descent 

I could count every flower on the hill

I couldn't drown out your consent

There is nothing left for me to forgive again

And It's cold in your bed 

And those flowers have long been dead

If you wait you can see there's a place where I use to be

You want to make me spin?

You want to hold me?

Counting days till you come in

I haven't lost you 

I've just misplaced you

However be? I could not tell

The window opened no explanation

You're right in the sun

And the dreaming has come undone

If you wait you can see

there's no reason to disagree

You want to make me spin?

You want to hold me?

Morning light shines in your bedroom

It calls me in to your arms

For a single moment I have peace

The quiet hours passing by

It's not what I want; it's what I need

The quiet hours fall to pieces

Heaven isn't where you thought

The dream is dying, fading fast now

The quiet hours gone at last

It's not what I want; it's what I need

You're in my head at times? 

I couldn't end the way you're my burning

And I can feel your heart

I've  been gone?

I can release these signs 

You won't  hear 

You won't know

You won't ever know

Your heart

It was falling from the start

Though I try

I was always dead inside

The midnight song 

Sing you to the moon

I am your quiet night

You were gone too soon

And I can feel your heart 

I've  been gone?

I can release these signs

You won't hear

You won't know

In a strange kind of way, lifeless landscapes have so much to say

And it's hard to sleep tonight, in my head buildings are collapsing

I've never seen the desert before, to be close to nothing

Shapeless and gone...

So good to know that you are out there, so good to know that you still care

And the light seems more bright, even the air feels like the first time

And I feel shapeless and gone... so close to nothing.

Shapeless and gone...

I've never seen the desert before, to be so close to nothing.

That's all I need 

To sit in the sun

There's something here 

That makes me run

It's all in my head... 

Or is it you instead?

We are not enemies 

But we don't have to get along

And I don't wanna listen 

Unless you speak from your heart 

...unless you speak from your heart

You can be weak 

Without provoking strength

And I don't want to be here 

When you will face yourself

We are not enemies 

But we don't have to get along

And I don't wanna listen 

Unless you speak from your heart

...unless you speak from your heart

Tell me if it's true?

Just tell me if it's true

This is the end of silence

Where everything begins

Tell me if it's true

Just tell me if it's true

One day we'll disappear

With all the pain and grace we have known

Fever in my eyes

There's fever in my eyes

What the ocean said to you

Something clever or something true

Or something that looks like you

The end of silence

Lately

I'm not sleeping

I'm not breathing

Without machine

Lately

My heart's been breaking

My heart's been breaking

Through the seam

Shut me off

Shut me up

Shut me off

Shut me up

Time taunts me. Says, ''You're getting older. Are you growing colder, hmm?" And time and time again, I doubt who I am. What a tragic ending. Don't let go of my hand. And today, i'll give you all my time. And you can count on me, for you look so tired. And today, it's time for you to rest. I know you've done your best, so rest your aching mind.

Oh It's a game, hold tight

Can you shut your eyes?

Shut out the light

Death is so bright

Stop to complain and turn your head around

Restrain yourself and then you die

Did you tell your friends how much you miss them all

And how great is to live in a brand new world

And it's hard tonight for me to talk

Anyway it's too late, the party is over and I really need to go

Would you do something for me, do something for me

Would you put me to sleep, put me to sleep?

This headache I have is writing a book all over my brain

I didnt' find my shoes and the night is about to end

And I think I've lost my voice again

I need you now, I hope you understand

Would you do something for me, do something for me

Would you put me to sleep, put me to sleep?

Take me away, directionless

It doesn't have to make any sense

Use what you have, I'll follow you

Use what you have, don't you worry now

Drifting in and out...

Choose what to be, take a side

What if I don't want to step out in the light

Give it to others, just let it go now

Give it to others, don't you worry now

Drifting in and out...

I've waited a hundred years

But I'd wait a million more for you

Nothing prepared me for the privilege of being yours

If I had only felt the warmth within your touch

If I had only seen how you smile when you blush

Or how you curl your lip when you concentrate enough

I would have known what I was living for

What I've been living for

Your love is my turning page

Only the sweetest words remain

Every kiss is a cursive line

Every touch is a redefining phrase

I surrender who I've been for who you are

Nothing makes me stronger than your fragile heart

If I had only felt how it feels to be yours

I would have known what I've been living for all along

What I've been living for

We're tethered to the story we must tell

When I saw you well I knew we'd tell it well

With the whisper we will tame the vicious scenes

Like a feather bringing kingdoms to their knees

Nothing can heal us from losing a loved one. Not truth, not sincerity, not strength, not kindness. All that we can, is to live while hugging this tragedy and learn that, no other new loss will be any less painful 

It's not enough to live my past, through photographs

Uncovered

One falling breath i've held in time, encased in light

Now fading

I can't feel myself in these scenes

An absence leaves this incomplete

Kept myself alive, but it's unclear, what holds me here

Unaging

Echoes of life embrace these walls, 'til they dissolve

Cascading

I've been searching for something in these frames

By face or name, those eyes...

Where's the fight i am not feeling?

When life takes away each fleeting part of what we are inside.

There's a ghost in my living room

In silent sets, moving through

The attic in chemicals

Dissolve in two

There's a flaw in my chemistry

The chill swells and follows me

In choirs of cold machines

And their smoking skin

These bones reside within

A crack spool of medicine

The distant hum that blooms as we run

No way to displace

In broken light

The cold grey night

A ghost still around me

Leave another ghost behind

Wild heart surrender to me

What does it take to be like you?

Golden haze hold out for days

Haven't seen you 

Haven't seen anyone

Beautiful one

I wanna know what you are

Beautiful one

I wanna know where you are

There's nobody out there, it's just the noise of the wind

There's nobody out there and nobody getting in

Hope that happiness finds

It's way to your little house

While you were sleeping I

I played a ghost in a sheet

When our frames collide

There's nothing left to be

There's nobody out there, the rain is just starting to fall

You get some rest now you'll worry yourself thin

Hope that happiness finds

It's way to your little house

While you were sleeping I

I played a ghost in a sheet

When our frames collide

There's nothing left to be

The skeletal wings of birds

I'll take the stairs

The ghosts of tiny animals

With the tiniest of feet

The forecast is going down

A storm

Storm

You wanna know me 

What's to know

Do I amuse you

When the night is slow

Do your eyelids ever close

Caught spirits in your waking woes?

I know where to find you

Know where you go

And I just want to let you know

You can have me

You can have me all

And you're twisted 

What can I say 

Your days are empty 

And my tongues decayed

I know where to find you

Know where you go

And I just want to let you know

You can have me

You can have me all

Why the struggle, why the strain?

Why make trouble? Why make scenes?

Why go against the grain?

Why swim upstream?

It ain’t

It ain’t

It ain’t no use

You’re bound

You’re bound

You’re bound to lose

What’s done

What’s done

What’s done is done

That’s the way the river runs

So why get wet? Why break a sweat?

Why waste your precious breath?

Why beat your handsome brow?

Nothing changes

Nothing changes

Nothing changes anyhow

Doubt comes in

And strips the paint

Doubt comes in

And turns the wine

Doubt comes in and leaves a trace

Of vinegar and turpentine

Where are you? Where are you now?

Doubt comes in

And kills the lights

Doubt comes in

And chills the air

Doubt comes in and all falls silent

It’s as though you aren’t there

Where are you? Where are you now?

You’re shivering

Is it cold or fear?

Just keep singing

The coldest night

Of the coldest year

Comes right before the spring

Doubt comes in

With tricky fingers

Doubt comes in

With fickle tongues

Doubt comes in and my heart falters

And forgets the songs it sung

Where are you? Where are you now?

Hold on

Hold on tight

It won’t be long

’Cause the darkest hour

Of the darkest night

Comes right before the dawn

When will we know it's enough?

Kept you here beneath my breath

Smooth the sheets upon the bed

Gathered slowly on the steps

Placed an heirloom to forget

When will we know it's enough?

It's enough

It's enough.

As I stared into your eyes,

A secret bell is ringing under the ocean,

Oh the ocean, is looking at me,

Have we ever met before?

As I struggle to forget what I came,

What I came here for,

I came here to go.

It was my heart I gave you

Ain't no easy thing for me to do

Been returned to me in pieces

Oh no honey it ain't no good no more

It's all broken up abused

Who'd want it now it's all been used

Sweet lord only knows

Well I ain't got no more love to give

Your love been like a rolling stone

Forever ain't a long time at all

Forever ain't a long time

When there ain't no remedy

This feeling ain't gonna be leaving me

So much remind me of you

I light my cigarette the way you do

Been bare foot in my kitchen

And you been in every one of my rooms

My pillow has captured all your dreams

And your nightmares I keep in my shoes

Well there ain't no love in this lonely place

I done wasted all my love on you

Well you know I seen the dark side

And you know I made the shadow my friend

You knew this when you met me

It intrigued you back then

But now you're afraid to be with me

With all you said and done

You said forever you would love me

Forever ain't a long time to come

My fingers have seen every inch of you

And the blood that you keep to yourself

I done tasted that there little evil

I been crawlin my way outta hell

Your thin line lip of deception

Been working over time

And there ain't no right combination

That's gonna get us outta this here trouble this time

Would seem to all be left up to chance

I'd see the fire in your head

And I knew the dance

It all seems like so many years ago

But I'm still burnt by the curse been cast

Was I a fool to try and hold onto you

Shoulda been strong enough to let you go

If I'd seen all the things that I do see now

Baby believe me I'd 've run from you

Well my love is all I got to give

Got to give to anyone

It's a choice you make and a risk you take

When you wanna believe in love

When you only wanna be loved

Well I ain't gonna choose love no more

I ain't gonna choose no love

If you only got that kind of conditional love

I ain't choosin love no more

Forever ain't a long time at all...

I could ask you "are you dead like me?"

Call me what you will, but call me again

It's true I don't talk too much

Because our lips won't last forever

And that's exactly why

I'd rather live in dreams and I'd rather die

Because our lips won't last forever

And that's exactly why

I'd rather live in dreams and I'd rather die

Pretty face could you make the jump with me?

I'm dying just to let things go

Do you remember the lightening storm?

It was the first time that I really felt you

Because our lips won't last forever

And that's exactly why

I'd rather live in dreams and I'd rather die

Because our lips won't last forever

And that's exactly why

I'd rather live in dreams and I'd rather die

We've got eyes on the back of our heads

As the mountains melts together with the sunrise

You tell me about the time

When you turned yourself into a stranger,

And all the chemicals were dancing in your blood

When you dear suddenly felt seasick.

Because you thought all lies were revealed.

And the thing that I felt when you told me

About that house with that singing weathervane

Oh, determined heart please translate it!

These cryptic messages hidden in between,

Her moon and her sky and her oceans

Cause I don't seem to understand them anymore.

Now the bachelor seems to wind up in the corner.

And his army of lovers they have left.

And the breakman is obviously sleeping.

Cause this train is going faster than light.

I still dream

Wake up cryin'.

You're making rain,

And you're just in reach,

When you and sleep escape me.

You're like my yo-yo

That glowed in the dark.

What made it special

Made it dangerous,

So I bury it

And forget.

But every time it rains,

You're here in my head,

Like the sun coming out

Ooh, I just know that something good is gonna happen.

And I don't know when,

But just saying it could even make it happen.

On top of the world,

Looking over the edge,

You could see them coming.

You looked too small

In their big, black car,

To be a threat to the men in power.

I hid my yo-yo

In the garden.

I can't hide you

Oh, God,

I won't forget.

'Cause every time it rains,

You're here in my head,

Like the sun coming out--

Ooh, I just know that something good is gonna happen.

And I don't know when,

But just saying it could even make it happen.

And every time it rains

You're here in my head

Like the sun coming out.

Ooh, I just know that something good is gonna happen.

And I don't know when,

But just saying it could even make it happen.

Ooo-ohh, just saying it could even make it happen.

Falling through your song

My desires come undone

Though I looked for you all night

The words were never heard.

When I dreamt of you so sweet

In the garden of my touch

Drowning into sheets

Imaginary love.

In the world of social media, we are our own self-portraitists. Our digital identity is doctored to show the best version of our lives. (Maybe a more apt name for Facebook would have been “Best Face”.) It’s not a new observation to point out the disparities between our online identities and our real selves, but for me, as a cancer patient, that gap has never felt larger.

If you had visited my Facebook profile last June, you would have found pictures of a smiling 21-year-old. This was a happy, successful, carefree person. On Facebook, aren’t we all?

What most of my Facebook friends couldn’t have known was that this young man no longer existed. In the “real world,” I was in the oncology unit of a Sydney hospital, undergoing my first round of intensive radiotherapy. My hair was falling out in clumps, and it had been weeks since I had eaten solid food or taken a walk outside. Even my name had been changed, inadvertently — my hospital door tag read "Wilson".

When I learned I had an aggressive form of leukemia 12 months ago, a lot of things were running through my head, but updating my Facebook profile was not high on the list. After all, in the land of Facebook, I didn’t have cancer yet. Friends were still posting on my wall. Online, I was still a healthy university student, who was “in a relationship”.

But every time I logged onto my Facebook account, my profile felt more like a stranger’s than my own. In the midst of a medical crisis, I found myself preoccupied by a social media question. To share or not to share? I wondered to what extent my digital life ought to reflect my real one.

As long as illness has been around, people have faced the challenge of communicating what it feels like to be sick. But social platforms like Facebook and Twitter make it easier to share than ever before. Even so, I found myself hesitating to answer the Facebook prompt that asks, “What’s on your mind?”

My first social media decision following my diagnosis was to cut and run. I deactivated my Facebook account. Looking at pictures of my healthy precancer self stirred uncomfortable emotions; it was a reminder of a life past, of all that had been taken from me.

I wanted to withdraw from the world until I got better. Then I would reactivate my account and move on with my life as though nothing had ever happened.

To share my cancer with my Facebook “friends” felt way too public and maybe even trivialising. After all, cancer is not something you “like” on Facebook. But in an age where our social media presence is so inextricably linked to our identity — on and off the computer — not updating my profile to reflect my new reality felt inauthentic, even dishonest.

Five weeks into my first hospitalisation, my doctors informed me that my disease hadn’t responded to the treatment. Exhausted and depleted, I couldn’t imagine starting the process over in a few weeks. It was the first time that it struck me that I might not get better for a long time, or at all. My cancer wasn’t seasonal, or something I could temporarily hide. Illness was going to be a part of my life. For now.

After the hospital, I went home to my bedroom. I had completed an almost total retreat from the world. I found it hard to even pick up phone calls from my closest friends. What did I possibly have to report? My days were a dreadful routine of meals, medicine and the view of the ceiling from my bed.

But my self-imposed exile weighed on me. As hard as it was to relate to my peers — 20-somethings starting new jobs and new adventures — I missed my friends. And my disengagement had started to worry them. In this hyperconnected age, when we’re all keeping tabs on one another through our online avatars, not updating a status message can be its own kind of update.

I began to reconsider my Facebook silence. For several months now, I’ve been posting updates — about chemotherapy, baldness, nausea and the like. There’s a liberation in the type of public honesty you can engage in on social media. And in some ways, venturing back into social media has been better therapy than any prescription.

For the first time since I’ve been sick, I feel connected to a responsive community I hadn’t previously known existed. I like hearing from other cancer patients, and their caregivers, who share with me their own stories and wisdom. And for my friends, this has been an opportunity to witness and engage in an ongoing conversation about what it means to have cancer in your 20s.

So much has changed in my life since my cancer diagnosis. But now, when I go to my Facebook profile, I see myself again.

Down in my valley

Are vultures like lovers

That search for

That something

To hold on to

Maybe 

It's crazy

To hope for

Something more

Than flesh, bones, teeth, skin

Won't they ever 

Let you in?

Would you 

Hold my 

Hair back 

When I'm sick?

Sometimes 

We can't say 

What we're meant to.

If I am

Please don't

Remember

Those nothings 

From our heart 

That quickly

Exploded

Dancer in the night

Playing with my eyes.

Velvet tongue so sweet

Say anything you like.

Crush me with the lies

And tell me once or twice

That love is paradise,

That love is paradise

Finally relax my weary limbs, 

Just lay still

The ceiling undulates,

The fault of some strange pill

I see your body in the doorway, so it seems

I must accept my eyes 

Betray these half-dreams

Oh, I need your bedroom eyes

Oh, I need your bedroom eyes

The hours to the sunrise creep, but I don't care

There is no hope for any sleep if you're not here

In another city, in another bed you're sleeping

So won't you come and visit me when I'm dreaming

I fear that I'll never sleep again

I fear that I'll never sleep again

Oh, I need your bedroom eyes

Oh, I need your bedroom eyes

It was the hungriest night I ever knew

But it was hungry for you, love

And what a shame we spend so little time living

Isn't it?

Our hunger is so wild like an only child

I could scream a healthy scream

What do you want to know?

I'll tell you anything

Your touches of virtue, and I'm rarely two shoes on the ground,

How'd I get here?

From rubbing horseshoes, your rabbit feet, underground, the roots of trees 

How'd I get here? 

I guess I'm getting an Alice In Wonderland vibe. Wish they'd publish the lyrics for us!

If you're afraid of the dark 

And you can't sleep,

Take a walk through your thoughts.

And perhaps on your way,

You'll find a true love.

You'll leave this lonely life.

And i'll walk through the forest.

And to whom and what do i belong?

And it's so cruel to be so blind

And lead such a lonely life.

Where are you?

If you're lost at your house

And you can't find your key,

Take it out on the mouse.

And i beat myself up for

Reading into the night.

And it's so cruel to be so blind

And lead such a lonely life.

With a brush and ink

I paint a lake

Some times all it takes

Is a walk around the lake

To ease your mind

All it takes

Is a walk 

'Round the lake

Late at night

I'll stay up and write

A book about my life...

...So no one would ever make

All of my mistakes

Well, I've made my loved ones cry right in front of my eyes

And I've spent so long hurting

In such a short life

But I'm moving on

My heart is grown

I'm moving on

Yes, I'm moving on

My heart is grown

I'm moving on

Sometimes it's all it takes

Is a walk around the lake

Oh, and sometimes it's all it takes

Is a walk

'Round the lake

Half past nowhere

alone

in the crumbling

tower of myself

stumbling in this the

darkest

hour

the last gamble has been

lost

as I

reach

for

bone

silence.

As the mountains melt together with the sunrise

You tell me about the time

When you turned yourself into a stranger,

And all the chemicals were dancing in your blood

When you dear suddenly felt seasick.

Because you thought all lies were revealed.

And the thing that I felt when you told me

About that house with that singing weathervane

Oh, determined heart please translate it!

These cryptic messages hidden in between,

Her moon and her sky and her oceans

Cause I don't seem to understand them anymore.

Now the bachelor seems to wind up in the corner.

And his army of lovers they have left.

And the breakman is obviously sleeping.

Cause this train is going faster than light.

I sit on the edge of a cataclysmic abyss

Straddling the horizon

As sand dissipates under my feet

And I dream of falling

Show me

Show me how it’s done

This tired face too pale

These tired feet don’t know where they are headed

Show me

Show me how it’s done

This troubled mind needs rest

This aching heart needs more than you can offer

I’m playing with a dangerous flame again

And i’m happy as I can be when you are gone

I’m playing with a dangerous flame again

And i’m happy as I can be when you are gone, gone, gone, gone

Show me

Show me how it’s done

This tired face too pale

These tired feet don’t know where they are headed

Show me

Show me how it’s done

Invisible wars

You and I

Still acting like we’re strangers

I’m playing with a dangerous flame again

I think i’m happy as I can be when you are gone

I’m playing with a dangerous flame again

And i’m happy as I can be when you are gone

I’m playing with a dangerous flame again

And i’m happy as I can be when you are gone, gone, gone, gone

Have you ever felt like you were on auto pilot? 

Watching from behind your own eyes. 

Not feeling or hearing a thing. 

Everything purely isn’t from habit and ritual. 

You watch as the world passes by without compassion. 

Screaming loudly but no one hears.

Muffled by your own pain reaching out silently 

for someone to understand and help you cope. 

Like throwing a ball in the air and expecting someone to catch, 

you fall with no where to land. 

Nothing to soften the harsh blow. 

The damage is too far gone. 

Now Im numb beyond anything I thought possible. 

There is no heart that beats in my chest, 

it has been replaced with the cancer of pain. 

Slowly eating me alive. 

Everything carries a darkness, 

all roads leading to somewhere depressing and full of pain. 

Words bleed from my finger tip trying to find some solitude 

in pouring out how I feel. 

Someone has to ease this pain.

You covinence yourself to live each day to the fullest,

Following out the cliche of your own experience.

You hide your fear from your family and tell your friends one truth,

"the prognosis is relatively good."

The others you don't say.

Sometimes the heaviness of hope gets to you

And what you need most is to feel the purity of fear

To let it burn out the details of your day to day life.

You live in this underworld, 

You now let yourself know, 

Here with fear and with a loss

That cannot be compensated.

You know this is a private underworld

And that to talk of it too much might destroy something, 

But sometimes hope's burden is too much,

And what you crave more than some sign of perpetual life

Is the clarity to say things as they really are.

Keep climbing into my head without knockin'

And you fix yourself there like a map pin

On this ghost of this street where i'm livin'

I'm in a chrysalis and i'm snowed in

Darling, darling that dam's gonna give

It's inevitable the way that you live

Bottles in brown paper and a mouth that slurs

All the shit that it stirs

Let that dogwood blossom

There'll be hell to pay in heaven

For you take every street home

What happens when you're into deep to break

Loneliness keeps you constantly awake

What happens when the passage of time appears 

You see yourself as a child and it brings you to tears

You say that you're troubled and you always have been

Uncomfortable in your own skin

So you contemplate the riverbed

Turn off the dark thoughts in your head

Darling, darling that dam's gonna give

It's inevitable the way that you live

Bottles in brown paper and a mouth that slurs

All the shit that it stirs

Let that dogwood blossom

There'll be hell to pay in heaven

For you take every street home

Today, I’m writing from a hospital bed in Seattle. I’m in the bone marrow transplant unit, where this week I’ve undergone intensive chemotherapy treatments in anticipation of receiving stem cells. In the year since my diagnosis, I’ve struggled to hold onto a sense of who I am while I watch the person in the mirror change.

Looking back, I call the first month after my diagnosis “the cancer bubble” because I wasn’t showing obvious signs of my disease. I looked about the same — maybe a little more tired and pale than usual, but a stranger could never have guessed that I carried a secret, deep in my bones.

In the oncology ward, I still felt invisible, flying under the radar with my mouse hair. In the waiting room at my second appointment, a man with a sleeveless shirt and a bandanna covering his hairless head leaned in toward my father, who’s been bald since the ’80s, and raised his fist in the air: “Live strong, brother,” he said. Later, my dad and I had a good laugh about the mix-up — it helped ease our tight nerves for a moment. But I remember also feeling slighted, as though my terrible new disease wasn’t being acknowledged.

I remember my first day of chemo as if it were yesterday. Within a few weeks, my waist had shrunk to a double zero — the size it was when I was in the sixth grade. My cheek bones jutting out. Rings under my eyes. Skin the color of chalk. And then there was my hair. My long, wavy hair — the same unruly locks I’d spent countless hours fussing over in front of a bathroom mirror — soon to be gone.

When I finally returned home after my five-week hospitalisation, I could feel the stares of strangers on my bald head and thinning eyebrows. Everywhere I went, cancer spoke for me before I could say the first word. Once, I even overheard a child asking her mother why there was did that boy have no hair.

Cancer had given me a reverse celebrity status: all the attention for something you didn’t want to be known for. I had crossed over into a new land, the land of Patient. And with every step I was feeling less like Zack.

Now, here in the bone marrow unit, where I’m required to be in isolation to prevent infections, I’m surrounded 24/7 by the gaze of people who, first and foremost, are concerned with what I have — not necessarily who I am. Doctors in face masks stand over my hospital bed, peering down at me. Eyes and ties. And white lab coats. Voices without mouths discuss me as if I weren’t in the room. They give the Patient a hospital gown. The Patient is talked at, looked at, probed, prodded and whispered about. But after all, it’s their job to see me as Patient. The goal is to cure the Patient so he can return to being himself. But until then, it’s hard not to feel like just a body.

As Patient, you cede control of a lot of your life to others — to your nurses and doctors, to their decisions and schedules. I’m thankful for their care — where would I be without it? But anyone who’s been in the role of Patient can attest to the way it changes how you see yourself.

As I wait for my cure, I’m still a Patient. And while it’s been only a year, I can hardly remember what not being one is like.