Stage IV
An actual note to myself, written after learning my cancer progressed this week.
Walk, dance and exercise as much as you can.
For you, movement is life.
So is writing, creating and cultivating both
community and magic.
The day will come that your lover must carry you —
your body small, encased in one of your sweaters,
like the wings of the owl-woman you imagined saving you
all those years ago when you actually saved yourself.
But one of those memories is a long time gone,
and the other a long time to come.
There’s still time to drive to Buffalo for the laser surgery,
to repair your teeth, and ink your right arm,
to watch as more wrinkles form and grey hairs appear.
At least, this is what you tell yourself.
You know the truth is uncertain, but you believe
in your mind’s power to coerce your body to co-exist
with the malignancy it made.
As the stage IV metastases
wind their way through your deepest shadows,
you unleash treatments meant not to help you
“fight the cancer,”
but rather to dance with it and live.
