I came packed in oils, the residue of Eden.
Some said that grief made me.
Some said it was the death of a child.
Or a passion so dense no light escaped.
Some said it was sin.
They told me stories to account for the disease.
Of heavy elements that kept me from rising.
Of the ribbed wings of angels.
Of cells that changed.
I trusted the world to be natural. The voice
Of disease was the white noise I slept by.

What happened to me happened to you.
I ate too much or too little, the water was unclean.
I saw the face of illness mature in the mirror.
Everything that had been outside me
Came to be inside me.
I was unequally well and unwell.
I was my own medicine.
And now the endless remedies
Became the white noise I slept by, deeply.
For such and so many are the body's afflictions,
That to live is to die.

-- Marvin Bell, "A Healthy Life"