When I met Eva, it was after she had passed on from this world and gone into the next one.

A friend on Twitter wrote, “Rest in Peace Eva http://65redroses.livejournal.com – thank you for sharing your spirit of love & courage”. In less than 140 characters, I was motivated to see who Eva was.

Eva Markvoort was a 23 year old living with cystic fibrosis.

Eva, a New Westminster native, has been struggling with cystic fibrosis ever since she was a youngster. A moving documentary film, titled 65 Red Roses, was made of her wait to receive a double lung transplant. Directed by Vancouver filmmaker Nimisha Mukerji, it aired last year at the Vancouver Film Festival and on CBC TV. This heart-wrenching six-minute video taken in Eva’s hospital room on Thursday reveals the overwhelming strength and purposefulness of Eva, the dignity of her father, Bill, and the devotion of her sister, Annie, and mother, Janet. The walls of the Vancouver General Hospital room are covered with cards and letters from Eva’s many admirers.

The first post of her blog says this:

Our beautiful girl died this morning at 9:30. She is at peace.
Will write more later.

As a mother, my instant reaction was heartbreak. In just a few seconds, I understood why Eva was so deeply cherished, and why people who will never meet her, will love her just the same.

© Eva Dien Brine Markvoort 2006-2010

i can’t breathe

Mar. 25th, 2010 at 9:55 AM

i’m at that point now
i’m done with the poetics
asking for help
my sister is helping me write
actually helping me write

the medications have been piling up
they are taking their toll
i am supersaturated with medications
i’ve been medically missing in action for two days
the docs started taking me off some of them to see how i would manage

and i am not managing
not managing at all

i’m drowning in the medications

i can’t breathe

every hour
once an hour

i can’t breathe

something has to change

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

Visit 65 Red Roses to celebrate this beautiful Soul.

The moon dropped her clothes into
the garden pond, and utterly enchanted with
love for her
I swallowed the sky.
It tasted like rain
and wine
and dandelions
and babies
and made my heart
smile like the sun.

Black ribbon of highway
A nocturne with no moon, of
sighing tires and rumbling engine and
a wistful goodbye to all the things I’ve never needed
Too much to ride and I need
a drink or a broken down hotel’s sagging mattress and
fuzzstatic radio trapped in some starpierced stratosphere between
Mexican talk shows and country stations out of Waco
A brawl in San Marcos
A blowout in Temple
Long miles of sage brush and Joshua trees standing like sentries in
my blind headlight
Eternal road that could just as well be a moonscape or
a lost highway on a foreign planet
Ride to forget
Ride to escape
Ride long enough to leave myself behind
Dry county
Dry air
Dry eyes
Dry soul
Just roll…
Just roll…

I burn for you

On fire in sweetest agony and begging for mercy to be utterly consumed enraptured filled and the sum of my being rearranged flayed from my bones and molded under your hands against your flesh against mine around you around me to the peaks of triumphant cumulus clouds exploding in waves of fire ice and sweat breaking beading washing in luminous tides to drown us in oceans of violet desire and wafting us on swelling fragrant updrafts to soar as eagles on the dawn and through silvery seas of the Milky Way to sip the nectar of the Big Dipper and inscribe our confident arch across the universe as we are launched from the bow of Orion to plummet into rippling seas of golden barley and warm wildflowers.

I burn for you

Her breath stirring expectant leaves that
whisper sweetly under warm
hymns of the cicadas

Building higher and more majestic her
voluptuous cumulus rises in a shuddering sigh
her face growing dusky with growing ardor
her ragged gasps ringing hot against my cheek

Thunderclap of her climax and silver rain laughing down
on this withered land, quenching my parched lips.
I turn my face to the sky and laugh against her humid thigh.

-Frank H. Weeden