Lu Pierro - It's Nothing

A doctor’s visit delayed

until nothing was 3 centimeters round,

the diagnosis: the C word.

A word we couldn’t say,

a word that caught in our throat

filling us with phlegm-like dread.

And so we entered a new country

with a new language.   

Words like carcinoma, hematology

and dysplasia became as common as say,

hair, and blood, and nausea.

We became a cluster,

a coterie shrouded in scarves.

We joined the Church of  Miracles

taking our plastic Lazy Boy seats

with our fellow supplicants

in the oncology ward.

Each had her own bottle of salvation

that dripped hope and despair

in the same vein.

For you, there was no redemption.

When flesh loosened from your bones

and your teeth shone like alabaster tombs,

I knew the time had come

for you to shatter

into nothing and into everything.

           

Lu Pierro is a Creative Writing Major at Warren Community College. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ars Poetica, Natural Awakenings, US1, Blast Furnace, If and Only If, and Threeandahalfpoint9, East Fork among other journals.  She is the recipient of both the Dodge Foundation Scholarship and the Dorothy E. Laurence Scholarship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass.