Idiomatic
written by: Mark Woodward
He’s talking while I’m already annoyed,
not at him.
I’ve gone somewhere else,
stopped listening properly.
I know what my body is telling me,
just under the shoulder,
upper thoracic street.
Pointed out like he’s showing me a route.
C- spine, chest, there, there,
that same pain that runs from backbone to left arm.
I know that patch better than my own back garden.
“Urgent” gets said but not like a siren.
I nod like I understand,
but what I’m really thinking is
I used to walk twenty kilometres before breakfast,
not a big deal.
Head clear, legs doing their job, life moving.
Now I’m measuring whether I can get out the front door,
without that warning shooting down my left arm.
He’s talking about fatigue,
about pacing it,
about not burning out by mid-morning.
Then he drops it in:
“Softly, Softly, Catchee Monkey.”
I want to snap,
“Mate, I don’t need a proverb.”
Like something said over a pint.
I don’t want softly,
I want my legs back, my engine back.
Two hours, sixty kilometres, sweat, legs burning, job done.
Not this half-life version.
I need the thick neck bloke I was
before all this poison got poured into me.
I can see him, that old version of me.
He’s not gone, flat on his back
in some cell inside me.
Chemo put him there,
hormone jabs locked the door.
I visit him every day in my head.
That Cro-Magnon lump of a man I used to be
losing it.
I tell him, “We’ll be out soon.”
He doesn’t answer, and I hate seeing him like that.
I keep trying to get him up:
“Come on, we’ve got miles to do, we’ve got work to put in.”
Dunc doesn’t argue with me,
he just keeps it plain.
“You’re rinsing yourself.”
“You’re wiped out, pay for it,
do it again, call it discipline.”
He’s seen this play out before,
men like me always try to win it the wrong way.
“You want to live longer,”
“You need to start living modestly.”
That hits worse than the radiotherapy.
I’ve built a life on that pattern:
walk hard,
ride harder,
earn your rest.
Only now, there is none,
just a wall.
My head kicks off straight away:
you’ve got to keep moving.
Stop, and you slip.
Eat lunch, and you’ll pile it back on.
Rest, and you’ll go soft.
The voice has driven me for years.
Now I’m being told:
you’ve earned the right to sit down,
lie down in the afternoon, no messing,
curtains shut, get in bed,
not the sofa, not that half-doze rubbish.
“We call that shite sleep,” he says.
I know exactly what he means, he’s bang on.
I’ve been kidding myself, telling myself I’m resting,
while my head keeps running,
never stopping, never fully letting go.
That’s when it clicks in a way I can’t duck:
half-awake, half-listening,
I don’t know how to stop.
I know how to go.
How to override the limit.
I know how to ignore signals my body sends.
I don’t know how to respect it,
that’s exactly why I’m here,
the thing that’s finishing me off
faster than the cancer.
Palliative radiotherapy’s next,
targeted at the spine,
before it can take more than it already has.
The aim is to stop things getting worse,
not mending everything.
That offends something in me:
it feels like losing,
when I’ve always been about
fixing, improving, winning.
But there’s Christ,
not a loopy religion,
not waiting for me to sort myself out.
Right here,
mid-argument with reality.
He didn’t rush the cross.
He walked into it, knowing full well what it was,
no alarm,
no last-minute change of plan.
I’m stood there,
trying to sprint my way through something
that clearly can’t be beaten like that.
So, I try it Duncs’ way,
not perfectly, not flawlessly.
Just try.
Short walks, stopping before it bites.
Get back, eat lunch,
even though my head starts up again:
you don’t need that, you’ll regret it.
Eat it anyway.
Afternoon comes,
and everything in me says stay up,
don’t give in, keep going.
I go to bed, like I should. Curtains drawn, no phone,
no half-measures.
It feels wrong, feels like failure,
breaking a rule I’ve lived by for years.
Every part says keep going,
prove something, earn the day.
Something else happens:
I get up an hour later,
and I’m not wiped out.
Not flying, not fixed, but not wrecked.
I’ve actually got something left in the tank.
I hate that it works. That’s new.
So I do it again the next day,
and the next.
Softly, softly,
barely even that.
Not big wins, not the old miles,
not the old rides.
Bits of ground coming back
that I hadn’t even realised I’d lost.
A bit more energy in the evening,
a bit less anger at my own body,
a bit more room to be with Christine
instead of fighting myself in front of her.
Lunchtime comes, my head starts up again:
don’t eat, you’ll undo everything,
remember the steroids, remember how that went.
I eat anyway, not loads, not stupid,
just enough, and the world doesn’t end.
That man in the cell, he’s still there,
but he’s not the goal anymore.
Softly, softly isn’t giving up;
it’s kissing my wife
like it’s the best moment of the day.
I’m learning to live as I am now,
without wasting time trying to be who I was.
Just small movements done right.
Something starts to come back,
not the old me, he’s still there on the floor,
and maybe he stays there.
Softly, Softly Catchee Monkey.
It’s not about catching anything out there;
it’s about catching yourself
before you run yourself into the ground again.
About stopping just before you do damage,
not after.
Trust that step by step, inch by inch,
beats bigger done badly.
I hate that it’s true, but it is.
This slow way, this careful way, it opens things.
I get more days, more time with Christine,
more moments where I find Christ,
here in the mess of it.
I’ll take it,
not charging, not proving anything.
I’m still learning it every day, badly,
but enough to keep going,
not stopping altogether,
when this thing would quite like me not to be.
Softly,
Softly.
The only way forward that doesn’t kill me
faster than the disease.
If it looks like nothing to anyone watching,
they’re not the ones living it.
If this fatigue thinks it’s already finished me,
it’s moved too soon,
and I’m not done catching
what tries to get away from me.
Not today.
Softly.
- Idiomatic - June 20, 2026
- Shellshock - March 24, 2026
- Spotlight On Writers – Mark Woodward - January 3, 2026
