Denial

I will never forget my first encounter with a patient who had cancer. As an inexperienced neophyte it left a lasting impression on me.

Denial

A stalker found harbor in the breast

of a young farm woman,

grew silently until the alien burst

through her skin, leaking, reeking

like a cesspit.

She could no longer ignore the specter.

The farmer's wife spoke of spring

calving, of two unexpected breeches,

almost in apology for inattention to herself.

But the disease had moldered far longer

than the heifers giving birth.

At twenty-six, I smiled at her and stifled a gag.

Her oozing mortality sent cracks

through my own safety shield, her presence

pointing to the fallow field that awaited me.

I repackaged her wound. My mind whirled

with making an escape for a hasty self-exam.

The woman's husband sat dazed ---

like a storm had just wiped out his crops ---

and fiddled with his worn baseball cap, mutely.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor