Why is it me?

Lucia Tepper

Why is it me who found her soul

Thousands of miles away on soil so old

I can kiss the ground and feel my ancestors

Embracing a homecoming that was almost not to be.

Why is it me who sits in the room of

Bright fluorescent lights, holding some flocked toy in my hand

As the doctor says, “yes, the cells are malignant, you have cancer.”

Why is it me who gets to breathe another day,

Live another life,

not die from a death sentence.

I look around the infusion center that smells like

Rubbing alcohol and scrubs.

I see a woman in her 90s, so old her body curls

Within itself, returning to a fetal position, like coming home.

Why is it me who didn’t reach remission,

When 70% of people do?

When the depression swallows me whole and I long

To dig up a space under the carpet and burrow,

Disappear.

Why is it me who is blessed with so much love all around me,

Pouring in from the gaping cracks, fighting to suppress

The darkness and screaming, “but you are so loved, don’t you know that, don’t you know that…”

Why is it me who laughs and cries and feels

every human emotion under

the sun and moon and black holes

Whose life is wonderful and awful and beautiful and sad and profound

Whose story is complete with purpose and so void of meaning I want

to beg for a do over from some entity I don’t believe in.

As I lay in bed with the covers over my head,

Drowning in pain and gratitude, I reach out to touch

The very thing that has put me here.

Instead I find love and loss.

I see her, muddled in the water.

I try to grasp ahold, to scream and cry,

“Why is it me?”

But under the surface,

She cannot hear me.

---

Lucia Tepper is 26 years old. After growing up in Philadelphia, she moved to Europe when she was 20. She teaches English in Madrid, Spain to preschool and elementary school students. When she’s not kicking cancer's ass, you can find her solo traveling, cooking, crafting, going out in nature and connecting with beautiful people from all around the world.