Tag: cancer
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Collecting Beach Glass After the Storm
I never thought brick dreams could tumble in the wind. My wife collects our scattered memories in a undersized bin like a child on the tide line collecting beach glass and seashells. She listen for the sound of blood amidst the dying wind mistaking rustling pages for her breath cycling in and out, her pulse…
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In the Cancer Museum
In the cancer museum I imagine where mine would rest in peace and ease. My eyes scan rows of organs: Disney’s lungs on top of Newman’s own racy pair; Ingrid Bergman’s left breast bump Bette Davis’ right— indiscreet voyagers; Audrey Hepburn’s colon nesting Farrah Fawcett’s like Tiffany Angels. I saw my…
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Salvage
What keeps me holding onto my old self, preventing me from casting it into past swells? Something detested, adored, hymned too, haunted, cancer ridden, inflamed, grieving and torn- yet beloved, pulled forward into an ocean of tomorrow and tomorrow’s swimming to hope or drowning in hopelessness, never knowing where my forgiveness exists…
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The Wave
The hospital gown they gave me is the same one with clouds my mother and friend once wore, a hand me down filled with the aura of grief and hope, of time and death. My name and date of birth are the only thing the nurses ask as I am led to the mold…
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The Mold
I am a Vitruvian Man marked out like an anatomy lesson in black and green dye, something to align against the mean, a mold made of sheets and plastic to aim the mechanical eye to revolve its rays around. I can’t move because the machine requires mathematical silence to perform its cure, so the…
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Seeing 2020
I want to greet the new year with 20/20 eyes, knowing that cure dances on the edge of hope’s grave and that in this biblical year of flood, cancer and death, that grief is just a short term companion. Tomorrow time will step me away leaving only memory and the long walk to the…
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Oncology Nurse
Every touch is a devotion, every soft phrase a prayer to life, to continue living. – A nightingale, a dove gowned in heavenly blue a ministering survival chant. – Thank you and double checks are abundant. – They minister consistent kindness for they live among the blasted. – There is no sniping, no rivalries, just…
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Okay
“Are you okay?”, my wife asks when I cough. – “No. I’m fine. Yes. I’m not”, I respond, – stumping her in the poetic irony of words that – encompass the yes and no and the in between. – She flips the finger at me and I return the bird to the nest. – We…
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All This Chemo Is Making My Brain So Bright
Death, I notice, often comes with a smile and a kiss, a tender tuck of blanket into legs, a pull to the shoulders making shroud complete, a tender whispered secret. “Good bye” or “Good life”, it might be saying. But so does love. 2 The light of the cancer center is…
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The Port
The port rests on my high right chest, a pink crater, a cleanly folded linen shroud kissed with tears wheeled from operating room to recovery by melting folds of scrub blues with iodoform scents. The fragrance of me is creased into a tucked blanket, monitors on my legs and arm caressing rhythmic, sounds dissolving…
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The Nacre of Cancer
I have no taste for whiskey, although it seems over the years I have developed a proclivity for cancer, for building the nacre into pearl. It’s funny how one can live with death scooted to the borders, listening to it rap the door with sub-audible gusts that only your dog hears and barks at.…