We were always so close,
You were the lioness of my pride the one that I loved the most,
Because you always stood strong.
Strong enough from sunrise, until the moon died behind
dim rays of upcoming sunlight,
And I was always fast asleep.
My eyes were too new to bare such a thing,
The brightness of your face and the smell of your breakfast
was all I needed in the morning,
You made my body strong.

But, something has happened.
For the first time in my life I saw your pride limp a limp
of uncertainty to our front door,
You always faced the world with open arms…
They found a lump in your breast.
And you told me not to worry,
But I couldn’t help but to sweat in my face,
You told me not to cry, because our house wasn’t
that type of place.
We don’t cry here.
Sickness is a state of mind and nothing that God
can’t handle,
Nor has before, but who knows what the hell
God has in store,
After all it was just a lump,
and not…

So what am I supposed to do?
Sit here and wonder who’s helping you now?
Who’s helping you next?
Who’s touching your breast?
Momma’, I can’t rest.
Knowing that you cannot sleep soundly enough
to hear your own breath,
and my mind can’t stop wondering how much
breath you have left.

This sort of thing doesn’t happen to me,
To you,
To us,
To our family,
This potential disease is all some made up
abstract fantasy.
And the excruciating pain I hear about is a sort of
made up type of agony.
And the people,
The poor men and women who died are
all some make believe casualty,
And momma’.
I couldn’t bare.
I couldn’t bare to see you join them in their,
“Too-large-to-be-beautiful” tapestry.
Like I’d hate to see you strewn up into a blanket
or net,
and woven into someones dream-catcher and
threaded into a canopy,
Like you’re some mysterious, beautiful, star.
Something to gaze at,
Something to ponder in your room on dark nights
on your ceiling like 99-cent-glow-in-the-dark-stick-on-planetary
shapes,
You’re worth so much more than that.

I hope that lump turns to diamonds.
Sparkles somewhere underneath your caramel,
mahogany, sienna skin,
And I’d rather see you sparkle under rich brown tones,
Than turn frail in a pale yellow.
I hope your hands discover new freckles instead,
Wonder along traces of hair follicles and open pores,
I’d rather see new-found moles and 25 year old scars,
But I never knew a silly word like “lump” could put a
potential roadblock in our future plans,
I never knew that the word “lump” could transfer
such a tiny weight from your breast tissue to the
delicate skin of your hands,
A monumental gravitational pull towards hospital visits
and MRI scans.

I hope they discover diamond mines of bejeweled brown rocks,
And marble statues of dignified imperfection,
Grayish-black gargoyles of scars,
and rivers of Sierra Leone’s muddy brown complexion,
A heart full of parades, orchestras, poetry and dancers.
But maybe they’d find nothing,
After all it was just a lump,
And not…
Cancer.