I don’t think I’m alone when I say that I went through several phases of emotional response after receiving my diagnosis. Yes, I experienced the expected reflex denial, then the self-blaming, followed by confusion, and then a gnawing sense of impatience to get on with it, but I also went through a time when I felt betrayed by my own body. I felt sure that somehow my body became aligned with the cancer, the enemy. It was during that time and immediately after surgery that this short poem began to take shape. I read this piece at a breast cancer art and poetry event, which, surprisingly, it didn’t seem to fit.
Mastectomy
The blade, a god
parting a sea of skin,
made a monster of my body.
Good and Evil
left their dead
across my chest –
pockets turned out,
boots stolen.
A swollen silence, settled
but disturbed.
The look of fear
in desert faces, pocked,
ossified and stretched
to the horizon, dimming,
as it dips beyond.
Deanne Napurano