Do Cells Suffer When They Die?

Bizarre small sounds coming from
Your own stomach woke you up
In the middle of the night,

Just before the storms began.
At first you thought it was a mouse
Caught in a mousetrap in your bed,

Squeaking piteously in pain.
Then you realized there was no trap
Set anywhere, much less your bed.

Lightning flickered on your eyelids,
And you opened them. Your stomach
Was whimpering—not liquid sounds,

Not bubbling with gasses—crying
In a tiny voice to itself.
As you woke to this awareness,

You kept listening, and you asked
If these noises you’d never heard
From your insides in six decades

Should be considered surprising.
The cancer’s not in your stomach,
Yet, not that you know of, and yet

It’s around the vicinity,
Swashbuckling across the torso.
Maybe those were the dying cries

Of captured, burning settlements
Of citizen cells surrendered
To the marauding berserkers.

More lightning and the rain began.
Nothing much more ordinary
Than a late-summer thunderstorm

In the southwest’s monsoon season—
Nothing much more ordinary
Than an aging man with cancer.

The sad, shrill cries of the stomach
Sank to the back of consciousness
Like the news of people dying

Horrendously in other parts
Of the terribly human world.
Rain beat the window, and you slept.