Biopsies
Inside white charmless walls surrounding
a patient pulling a cardboard
packet of tissues apart like a miniature dwelling
Being demolished by an anxious hand in a short
hallway with doctors’ names engraved in silver
plates leading to a departure and arrival port
As others also sit nervously waiting to hear
a name read over an intercom from a secretary
to confirm or to dismiss the things awakened – gut instincts, fear
“It is malignant” – a pause like a comma
“I know” – a silent meditative response
staring at the parchment diplomas
While standing to leave and passing strangers
to begin a voyage toward unknown
lists of risks and dangers
In Preparations
For crimson diagnostic tests filling
tubes and machines searching
for other hints of growing
Cells with fluorescent shining over ultrasounds
highlighting them, busy, and still thriving to
mutate like a pack of wild hellhounds
Hunting other organs in queue
with a hungry and desperate
grabbing for the soul’s debut
Of silver swords in metaphors
as visualizations prepare strategies
to battle the unpredictable disease before
A growing angry foreign bodily army
insisting and pleading to take over
territory and to be given sovereignty
Over agonizing buzzing and buzzing, swarming inside
like a beehive broken open and recolonizing while
stinging inwardly as others observed at a painful bedside
Surgery
And a “You will be okay” from a nurse touching
an arm waiting for hopeful reassurance
that the patient was indeed fighting
While being wheeled to a bright
passage of stillness and quieted
doctors standing around light
“What is your name?”
“What year were you born?”
again silence plays a mental chess game
Looking up to a vagueness dimming and faded
in an act about to climax at a brilliant performance
of doctors as the curtain fell on vulnerable naked
Scars
In an awakened muscle of a sore neck, sliced
across the middle like an opening to an ancient
tomb with a body laid out martyred and sacrificed
By the surgeon, delicately tracing
through time and place where
parting became religious embracing
Of only an inward faithful answer
to remove the wild and fierce
hellhounds and bees of cancer
Urging again and again to be set free
deep within the veins, moving them
through a worn-out and tired body
Recovery
With yellow iodine smeared
over to prevent infection
as yesterday’s bandages disappeared
Like the petals of a daisy, pulled from lines
of plastic tape in front of a mirrored image
on a body covered in resurrectional wine
Over yet more tubes opening airflows
and a desire to be outside the tall building
living through sunrises in tomorrow’s
Treatments
During afterthoughts, like where was the will
in a cedar, five-drawer cabinet shelf, printed
on beige paper as lines already fill
With living demands of how to do things
and what was only to be given to a daughter
with journals also tied together with parcel strings
In nights where goodbyes
left the daily fighting
heard in “Will I make it?” cries
Of Surviving
To walk again outside in sun
hitting the rolling deep oceans
moving inside, spinning and spun
Possibility of a ship sailing
away because of a gritty fired will
making it bend before eyes watering
As the run-down warrior
arrives back at port
with eyes showing spirit exposure
From a voyage remembered
but never longed for in
streams of memory captured
As one colorful tapestry
meant to define the myth
of a new emerging humility
Living once again in the glory
and dance of bliss ending
an autobiographical, never-dreamed-of story
Photo Credits
Photo courtesy of Melinda Cochrane – all rights reserved
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