How I learned to stop being afraid and love my cancer
The first months, a prelude to Sturm and Drang,
a rapid mobilization for war, a cannonade roar
of MRI’s, biopsies; consultations, those brutal
skirmishes with oncologists, urologists, GP’s.
I girded for battle, armoured myself with grit, dogged
determination against an assault of words and images:
hormone therapy chemical castration lethargy
hopelessness nosexnomusclemassemasculation.
Cancer cells are ruthless aggressive. They belong to me.
Live and thrive in me. Flourished and grew in me. Mine.
They are my renegade children, scared and ashamed,
rebelling against an authority they don’t understand.
Cancerous or not, deadly or not, I need to hold them,
embrace them, love them, accept them.
All the fatigue, every sweat drenched sleepless night,
a sign the treatment is working, starving those cells,
but rather than saying fuck you cancer, or fighting them
to the death, I claim them, own them; allow them to heal.
Etymology;
Latin word for crab, finger-like spreading
projections, metastasizing tumors
and into MRI’s to biopsies to treatment
to depression fatigue restlessness fear,
a hazing ritual for some not-so-exclusive
club as if living through
trauma addictions grief abandonment
wasn’t enough of an initiation fee.
Alex Stolis most recent chapbook, Postcards from the Knife-Thrower’s Wife was recently released by Louisiana Literary Press, http://www.louisianaliterature.org/2024/04/11/new-release-announcement-alex-stolis/