Some Years “After the Almost-Apocalypse”

A breast
cancer scare hits hard
and fast--twisting, twisting,
twisting… the mind and gut
and leaving the heart feeling

drained, displaced, desolate. 

Those terrible days
(the ones that snail by
while your world is waiting,
waiting, waiting… to learn
if life is really rotting
inside the walls of your being)
those days are soul eaters.

But after
the almost-apocalypse is done,
when healers chant,
“You’re fine. You’re just fine”,
your world grows less bleak--
flesh and blood and bone exhale,
and the spirit blossoms

(differently) anew.

 

 

Daisy Sunshine by LoopyLady

- someone asked me, “Are you excited to get back to your normal life now that breast cancer is gone?” I told them that I wasn’t sure ‘getting back to normal’ was a realistic option for me. Later, after I had some time to think, I sent them a quote from Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book, to explain that after breast cancer, ‘it’s like your life breaks into a million pieces and when you put them back together, they don’t quite fit exactly the same.” Surviving (and thriving after the Breast Cancer Monster), requires hope, determination, self-love… and enough creativity to craft ourselves a new normal.

- I wrote the first version of this poem years ago; time has changed bits of it (and me).

– for Poets and Storytellers United (Friday Writings #134: It’s a Dirty Job)