Symploce

Symploce (sim’-plo-see or sim’-plo-kee): The combination of anaphora and epistrophe: beginning a series of lines, clauses, or sentences with the same word or phrase while simultaneously repeating a different word or phrase at the end of each element in this series.

I was expecting a catastrophe. I was destined for a catastrophe. Catastrophe is my middle name. So are “Dead Meat” and “Gone.” Moros, the Greek God of doom, is “with me” day and night as I wonder when He’s going to seal my fate.

My death was impending when I was born. For some reason, Moros hasn’t let Thanatos or Ker put me away yet. Maybe he’s too busy meting out doom to the victims of pandemics and wars to get around to alerting Thanatos or Ker about the little old man from New York.

Every day could be my last day. That’s the case for everybody, but they do’t think about it. For me, it’s my guiding light and sets the tone of my existence. I realize that any laugh may be my last laugh. I realize that every hurrah could be my last hurrah. I know that every supper could be my last supper. All my words could be my famous last words. I know what’s in store, but it is continuously delayed.

It’s like a train, taking me to Heaven or Hell, that never leaves the station. I anxiously sit there, clutching my hopes and fears, waiting—waiting for the departing lurch of the car, the trip, and my arrival at the place where I’ll spend eternity. Heaven? Hell? I won’t know until I get there. So, I wait impatiently, sometimes crying, sometimes yelling, sometimes drinking.

Every day I wallow in speculation, expecting to die. I should’ve developed an immortality complex by now. I have survived so many catastrophes that I should probably think I’m blessed, but I’m smarter than that—it’s Moros’s neglect that keeps me going. I was the sole survivor of an airplane crash in the Andes in 1956. I lost my family, but I survived. I was shot in the head in Saigon during the Tet Offensive in 1969, but I survived. My house burned down in 2000, killing my wife child, but I survived. Currently, I have skin cancer. Will I survive? This could be the one that gets me the hell out of here. I’ve been waiting here for 80 years. Enough is enough. If the skin cancer doesn’t take me, I’m going to give Ebola try. I need to travel more anyway.