“Misdeed of an Oncogene”
by Deborah J. Brannon
Silence
wracks my body:
the kind that comes
from a body too tight
with grief
to let anything escape
past a knot of terrible stillness–
your only hold on an equilibrium
that is fragile and crumbling
as the shore before the sea.
Stillness
in cracked liquid eyes
that slide past reality,
see memory as truth,
and white sheets,
cold rooms,
dripping fluids,
Cancer
wracking a loved body
as some sickened madman’s dream
from which you fear never to awaken,
Never
to find relief from
Silence.
