Stephanie Hashagen

Songs to Play at My Funeral, Track 19
Or: What the fuck is a young turk, anyway?

Are you having headaches
the eye doctor asks
and it catches
me off guard.

I’m staring
down the barrel
of that one machine, the one
where you press your forehead close and
they show you letters and
numbers and sometimes pictures:
there’s a red house
standing in a green field and
then she says
the thing about the headaches
and shows me another
kind of picture:

from the inside my eye looks like
an egg yolk
or a harvest moon—
rods and cones
and goo,
but also a tiny ball of light
which, she says, could be a
tumor, or,
you know,
it could be
nothing,
haha, jk—
and are you sure
you’re not
having
head-
aches
?

on the drive home
I think about how
to tell my husband and
should we tell my mom
before or after we know for sure
and then Rod Stewart
comes on the radio singing about
Billy and Patti and their ten-pound
baby boy and how time is on their
side tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, yeah
ooh, ooh, ooh
and I mean,

for fuck’s sake, Rod Stewart,
read the room.

Did you enjoy this? Share your comments here.

Stephanie Hashagen lives in Verona, Wisconsin with her husband and four cats. She is a claims examiner for disability insurance company. She is deeply uncomfortable writing about herself in the third person.