My body has been changed forever

and I wonder if people will know who I was.

I have pieces of metal in various forms
shaping who I am
in more ways than one—
three plates hold my hips in place
preventing them from dislocating.
And screws—I don’t know how many—
holding those plates to my bones.

I don’t want to be buried when I die.
The idea of being trapped underground
even if I am not there, is terrifying,
but if I were, I wonder what would be said
if people found my body in 100 years.

“What the hell happened?”
“So small, so sad.”
“She had Progeria.”

Can you even tell that from a skeleton?
I think of what the anthropologists thought
when they learned of Neanderthals.

The first people to discover them believed
that they were primitive, incapable of language,
people classified as an “evolutionary failure.”

Now people are learning they were intelligent
and capable of caring about each other.

You can learn so much from what’s left behind,
one skeletal bone can say everything.

* 

Exorbitant

A 2023 Porsche,
836 tickets to Disney World,
136 Round trip tickets to London,
3 brand-new Jeep Wranglers,
39 16-inch Macbook Pros,
more than a year of tuition at Brown,
a family of 4 living in Hawaii for a year.

These are just some of the things
you could buy each month
at the price of a life. My life.
The drug company bills
$99, 547.49 a month.
Over a million dollars a year.

Meanwhile I am trying to
remember the lyrics to “Good days”
by SZA while I’m washing my dishes.

* 

The World to Pieces

When I open the email my vision blurs.
Bankrupt. The company that produces
and distributes the medication I need
to stay alive is

bankrupt. Everything feels unsteady.
I don’t know how many needles,
how many tests,
have gone into me getting these
yellow powder-filled capsules.
How do I get my medication?
Will I have to go without?

One email, and all the powder
spills out of the pills straight
down the drain.

*

Stacked Deck

When we were in the hospital
together, getting treated
we argued over a
deck of Uno cards.

He says, “Draw,
until you can play.”
So I did.

Red, blue, green,
everything except
a yellow card.

I ran out of cards
to draw, but we both
lost the game.

*

Lindsay Ratcliffe is a poet from Flat Rock, MI. Her work has focused on her experiences with Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome. She is graduating from Albion College with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and English. Her English degree has an emphasis on Creative Writing.