Facing Breast Cancer - Travis Green

As I stood inside the doctor’s office
replaying every stained square
of sentences, I’m sorry to disclose
this information to you, but it appears
that you have stage one breast cancer,
inside my mind, I could feel the troubled
tears rolling down the side of my face
towards a dying world, some place
that I could not reach. I stared around
at the closed space surrounding my sight,
how the chairs and desk appeared to
fade into each other, how the shadowy
carpets and furniture seemed so dull
and drowned, how the flashing
lights became a slow unsettling lifeline,
a lonely existence stunned under crimson
seas. I walked towards the window
and gazed outside at the various people
passing by, a mother and son holding
hands under the shimmering sky,
a beautiful couple sitting on a bench
watching the brilliant landscape. And
these things began to make me cry
a little harder. I could see the stretched
and shuffled trees staring at the black
hole in my heart, scraped brick and bones
tingling half a dream, ancient ankles
thinning in failure, the meaningless thought
of it all, while I clenched my teeth, cry
beyond cry, scabbed, stabbed, dragged,
tumbling through stale surfaces.
the grief was shifting me away from
my existence, every memory sinking
the yellow skin away from the navel,
distorted truths swallowed, smoked,
choked, impatiently shutting down
in a river of strayed creations.

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