Today is a perfect day for a little hookey, 

I say as I seek my death from cancer, 

and so it goes that I do the dirty deed; 

it is time to impersonate the sun worshipper. 

But of course there are complications - 

Halfway into the burning ritual, I run into 

a god. There must be leash laws somewhere about that, 

about letting your gods go loose. 

Things are just not the way they were... 

We greet. We make silence. I remember 

that my flesh is slowly rotting in the ultraviolet, 

and this sparks a brief flash of intelligence - 

enough for me to babblingly pronounce, 

I was not made for the sun. It's a redhead thing, 

we're all closet vampires. It is probably 

not tacit agreement when the stray god informs me 

that with sunscreen I now have a choice 

between grease and death. Though in his innocence 

he has spoken truth (I am screened, and sticky.) 

Grease or death rings through my mind. 

Why do the gods always make you responsible 

for choosing? Now he invites me to darkness, 

under the student dormitories. I smile in silence. 

Somewhere, I must have accepted a choice.