Should I hang my head in shame for not dying
yet? This business of terminal disease is
much misunderstood. On the one hand, my days,
like poker chips stacked in a wobbly column,
keep shrinking, a disc at a time. No prop bets,
no parlays offset the odds. Yes, it is what
it is (can anyone say that with a straight
face?), but truthfully, I might prefer a firm
date to this open-ended question. I feel
good. Today. Which should be enough, but isn’t.
And tomorrow? There’s always that other hand…
Robert Okaji lives in Indianapolis. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in such publications as Vox Populi, The Threepenny Review, Evergreen Review, Southern Humanities Review, and North Dakota Quarterly.