On Caring and Other Addictions
By Regan Schell
Empathy is a disease,
but one that kills you lovingly.
I’ve never cared more
about anything ever
than I care about everything
always.
I live my life in shades of red,
pale pink for the slightest twinges
of deep-rooted heart pangs,
and bloody crimson for the passion,
the scream-worthy horrible
that coats my tongue
with sticky bitterness.
Empathy is a disease,
but I will be relieved when I die of it.
It’s a bone-ache, a heart-throb,
a scourge that weighs
my eyelids down like lead.
It bites my ankles,
endlessly urging me forward
like a strung-up carrot,
like a boot spur in the ribs,
and I am simply
terminally exhausted.
Empathy is a disease,
and I wish it were contagious.
An airborne plague,
afflicting the comfortable,
burning with something like rage,
like fear, like urgency.
Blood-boiling white-hot anger,
enough to do something,
anything,
instead of raising lily-white
Rapunzel towers
and polishing silver platters.
Empathy is a disease,
but I will let it take me.
It’s not some cancer you can battle,
And I’m not a warrior.
So you can find me,
swept up, caught in a heart-string net,
letting the waves crash
over my head, lungs burning,
hoping that all of this
will mean something.