Ultimatum

christopher lee

In the end of you, of me,

does the we persist to be?

One day, sour smoke rising

from my snuffed flame’s 

severance, all the elements

I ever was or touched passing

on to the next, I am gone. But, I am 

in you; until, after your death

has been mourned, and the last child 

is no more – what then will hover 

above the trees (our mothers?),

the hills, the bogs (our brothers?), 

the shipless seas? (will we?)

Will we still be, or be utterly free? 

Tell me through the strain

in your weakening breath

of the lives you sustain

in defiance of death.

Christopher Lee is a current third-year medical student. He wrote this poem the year before coming to UMass Med. He worked in Alzheimer’s research at the time, and was impacted by the patients and families he met.