I’ve been lucky enough to not have my immediate family affected by breast cancer (although I can’t say the same for other cancers), but I have witnessed so many families around me that have suffered through a loved one’s breast cancer diagnosis and dealt with its outcome, whether it be good or bad.
I can’t even begin to visualize what it must feel like to have someone close to you with breast cancer, or what it’s like to be a woman with breast cancer, or what it’s like to lose someone to it. All I know is that it must be more difficult than I could ever imagine, and I never want to know what it feels like.
This poem is dedicated to all the women who have been through a breast cancer diagnosis, regardless of if they have won the battle, passed on, or are still fighting today. This poem is also dedicated to the families of these unbreakable women, because cancer has also changed your lives forever. This month is yours, to celebrate the victories, honor the scars, and remember those who left too soon.
You sit on the
cold table, and
watch the door handle
turn slowly. You shift your
weight to face
the doctor. He walks in
the room and
his eyes
tell you
war has been waged on
your body,
a ravaging of soul and
piece of mind, while
peace is gone and
you battle time, to
fight for
more of it.
You begin to live in shadows.
No one will understand why
you sink into bedsheets early in
the day
now
silently to drown
in your fears alone,
after your daughter gets on the school bus
and
your husband goes to work.
You wonder how you will say it,
how they will handle the news,
when you tell them that
you are scared to lose
your life,
will never be the same.
You draw curtains over the window
at noon, walk by the mirror and
wonder
why your body betrayed you, and
how
you will look soon without
parts of you
that you never thought to lose.
You believe your womanhood is
defined by what they will
need
to remove, and that your husband's
love will be gone,
too
once they change you
and take them away, to keep
nothing but two heavy
scars across your chest as
reminders of only what is left,
now.
You begin treatments, and
you
feel fragile, like a piece of
glass
that could break with a hug
given too desperately, so
sometimes you'd rather not be
touched.
You lose things that made
you feel beautiful once. Tears
are not caught by eyelashes, and
it scares you that
you are used to
the smoothness of your head,
not your hair.
You fight.
You fight hard.
Time moves.
You realize your body
does not
come with a warranty, and so
every day you try to fix
yourself a little,
with a smile, and a nice
outfit, and maybe a walk
with your family
to see the leaves change
on trees that aren't afraid
to fall.
You realize that hair will
grow back, and love
does not
come and go as
it pleases,
but it stays, and
lives in
your daughter's kisses,
and your husband's hands
when he holds yours.
You live and breathe in
life around you, and begin
to think
that maybe your scars
are more than pain,
but a way to remember
that you can and are
beautiful again, in this
new body.
You fight.
You wait.
You sit on the cold table, and
watch the door handle
turn slowly. Things are different
now.
Maybe it will be better news, this time.
