Lump
When I discovered the lump, you looked into my eyes and said: "Everything will be all right." The biopsy was positive. But you gazed at me that way again: "Everything will be all right." Chemo began. I sat on my bed wondering if I could stand up without vomiting. You sat down beside me. Your eyes swam into mine and spoke again. But in six months, I was ready to give up. "Go ahead, give up," you said. "Everything will be all right." For a year I whispered, "I'm OK." Then I looked in the mirror: cheeks like smoke that veils the surface of a distant planet. I turned to meet your eyes, those gentler mirrors. The final night, I was a paper lantern without a bulb. They had me on a morphine drip. I couldn't wait for the animal in my throat to stop sucking. You came into the room, sat down beside me. "She can't hear you," they said. "Yes she can," you said. My eyes were somewhere else, but you found them ...