When it happens next time, I won’t care that I look like a music box monkey with fresh vellus hair, and I’ll smoke more cigarettes because I will be certain I am dying. I’ll drink more whiskey without chasers and scream louder into my pillow because this time, I’ll know for sure no one is listening; they all left the circus long ago.

When it happens next time, I’ll drive around aimlessly in my car for further distances because now I know, now I have learned, it doesn’t matter if I blow all my money on gasoline that isn’t taking me anywhere.

When it happens next time, I’ll drink so much water, my veins will always rise to the surface of my arms and can be plucked like pull strings by anyone who wants to play me. I won’t do this to please them; I will only do this to make things easier on myself. I’ll remember to take my sleeping mask and earbuds everywhere, so the bright lights from the humming machines don’t ruin four hours of precious sleep. I’ll stop wishing for faith to materialize because I know it’s never coming, and I’ll quit fantasizing about Maria, Jeremiah, Josephine, and the rest of my ex-lovers who have long forgotten I exist. I’ll quit hoping the saints will write me letters of longing, wishing for my hopeful replies.

When it happens next time, I’ll climb into a tree and squawk at everyone below just because I can.

When it happens next time, I’ll become even more haunted and obsessed with finding the dead and I’ll visit cemeteries more often. I’ll stop at gravesites and analyze the dates to discover if I have outlived those below. I’ll laugh and wiggle a little monkey wiggle because, of course, I have survived these buried bodies, but for how much longer? Last time I was told months, but it turned out to be years. Would it be days this time? Decades? Probably not. You knew it was coming back, the primate corpses will whisper to me. Yet you let those days, those months, those years slip by so fast. Why did you waste so much time dancing around your diagnosis, monkey? Why did you just keep moving when you could have simply come here with us to sleep?

When it happens next time, I’ll stop performing for others. I promise I will. I’ll stop smiling when they say But you look so good, and I’ll stop apologizing when I’m vomiting on my calves and shoes in public restrooms full of other people’s secrets. I’ll stop saying I’m sorry when I fall and require someone to dig gravel out of my palms. I need those palms to keep turning that music box lever, and I will break open the box and use the comb to groom my fresh vellus hair that has no reason to grow back because there is no way I will survive this twice.

When it happens next time, I will be a fucking song.

In a past life, Suzanne Samples was a calico cat. In this life, she is a brain cancer survivor and the author of the memoirs Frontal Matter: Glue Gone Wild and Stargazing in Solitude. She is also the co-founder and fiction editor of Dead Skunk: A Lit Mag that Doesn’t Stink.