every
cancer is my mother
of course i was
intimate with her breasts
puny thing nursing on
her nineteen year old nipples
the price she paid
for marrying young to escape
alcoholic parents.
her biggest sorrow that
she couldn't rescue
her younger sister too
but that's another
story. this one is about
what happens over and
over and over
to women young and
old who never asked
for the pink ribbons
in october, who never
begged to lift a cup
to curie or to
the menacing
mammogram machine
who dreaded the news
of a sister or cousin
or worse yet, their
own mother's pre-death
certificate, that
single razor-edged word
that doesn't need to
be said here because
you know what it is,
know what comes next
know that five-year
survival rates are lies
know that choosing to
treat means pain,
disfigurement, loss
of lover's touch,
dreams destroyed or
at best put on hold
and ultimately means
only delaying
the inevitable end.
you cry but
it doesn't change
anything
you know that not
treating leads to
the same unavoidable
finality, the only
difference being how
long you have
to say "i love
you and goodbye"
as a traveling nurse
i expected to get
every worst
assignment, every difficult
or demanding patient
that the regular staff
needed a break from
and i never said no
until the night i
went to work, just months
after my mother bled
out—her way of saying
"no
more"—and found i'd been assigned
a woman my mother's
age whose breasts
had betrayed her and
were
unceremoniously
bilaterally
removed
that was thirty-some
years ago
and all that has
changed is that
the faces get younger
and younger
i've lived past the
age when my own
mother stopped aging,
and with every
revelation from a
female friend
or stranger, my mind
flashes back
to the wigged woman
in her recliner
jaw set tight against
the pain
holding on for
reasons only she knew
holding on for two
miserable years
it's that image,
burned into my grief
that makes every
cancer personal
and every woman my
mother
j.lewis is an
internationally published poet, musician, nurse practitioner, and the editor of
Verse-Virtual, an online journal and community. When he is not otherwise
occupied, he is often on a kayak, exploring and photographing the waterways
near his home in California. He is the author of four full length collections,
with a fifth forthcoming in 2023, plus eight chapbooks. Learn more
at https://www.jlewisweb.com/books.asp
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