Tag: cancer survival
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Scarred Body Valentine
Scarred Body Valentine emerged from the aftermath of a surgical trauma that reshaped both my body and my marriage. I wanted to write a poem that refused sentimentality and instead honored the raw, procedural reality of healing—where love is not a balm but a shared endurance. The poem is structured as a medical descent into…
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Reclamation
Reclamation began as a meditation on the chalk line—first as a metaphor for confinement, then as a literal aura traced by radiation machines. I wanted to write a poem that didn’t glorify survival but acknowledged its cost: the neuropathy, the pouchitis, the ache where the colon once lived. The poem lives in the tension between…