Denouement

By Alana Saltz

I’m enthralled as I watch a beautiful actor

scribble symptoms in notebooks and cry

when the pain is too strong and see doctors

who seem to know a little too much about

what’s happening, but it’s okay.

I’ll keep watching.

I can’t be that picky.

I ignore all the cues that this will end

the same way as all the other TV

reflections of me, the fun house mirrors

that only show sickness as a distorted, shortened

one-way road.

There was never another ending.

He’s only got one place to go.

His beautiful actor family

weeps over his departure

at just the right time

in the series.

Meanwhile,

my body

keeps breathing.

Alana Saltz is a poet, writer, and disability activist living in Tacoma, WA. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The LA Times, The Huffington Post, Words Dance, Anti-Heroin Chic, The East Jasmine Review, and more. You can visit her website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.