In honor of “breast cancer awareness” month
The wagons are circled,
Twenty-six chemo chairs.
We face the walls
And contemplate mortality.
Forty-two-thousand-dollars per
Three-week infusion.
Some are cheaper. The weekly treatments
Are only twenty-four-thousand.
Every chair in use, three shifts a day.
The nurse teaches us about pee.
Lower the lid before you flush —
Don’t contaminate your husband’s toothbrush.
Nevermind the frogs downstream,
Four legged cousins, your fishy friends.
You just sleep now. Sleep.
I dream:
If I am very lucky, there will be an evening
Where the robins weave a web of calls,
And the fragrance of warmed petals lifts me off my feet.
I’ll hardly notice the frogs not croaking.
It’s amazing how you can say so much with just a few words strung together just right.
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That’s the miracle of poetry (which, by the way, I never wrote before I had cancer)!
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Me conmueven profundamente las palabras que he leido, me llevaron en retroceso hace dieciseis años que estuve en quimioterapia y radioterapia, el solo hecho de recordar me hace estremecer y sentir profunda empatia con todos los que tienen cancer, yo los llamo hermanos, asi querida hermanita Erica Steringin te envio un grande y fuerte abrazo fraternal solidario, para ti y para todos los que se encuentren en este trance de tratamientos
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Gracias a mi hermana de pecho – un abrazo a ti, tambien! Bendiciones a Dios a ti.
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