The C Word
The words are dark, sharp,vicious, viscous.
The images like bubbling, darkest jam,
With bubble like grim faces riding to the surface
Then bursting.
I am thirsting.Alternately with blood and bile,black.
I am a sad sack,
A pillow filled with rotten meat
For faceless men to hack.
My belly is like a Gourd, hard,
I wear maternity tents night and day.
And no-one knows what to say
Except "Just wait another day"
Or even WORSE, the Very WORST
"Could you be pregnant at all?"
Another day, five more tests.
Patients cheeping for food like birds in nests.
Every day I wait I feel them growing, these three
Teratomas.Monstrous.They are no part of me!
Monster is in the name (The Latin,the Greek).
They are:Feet, Toes, Eyes,Nails.An echo of a person.
You'd think they would be Meek.
Interlopers, how quietly they sneak.
And all inside my last and traitorous Ovarian sac
Which seems to nurture it.To help them grow, inside it's black
To kindle those monstrous stones inside me.
No-one wants me to say the word,as if if they don't it will cease to be.
CANCER!
There, I said it.
Relax, they say, tests will be done (Again)
A catheter will drain my bladder (Again)
They will drain my bloated belly (Again)
Nurses will drift in and out
Antiseptic fills my snout.
Spectres, life in this half dream, cut with miserable pain
White clad nuns seen through misty rain.
But were those three interlopers inside me, Rubies,
I could become rich on them.
Something to leave in my will
Which I haven't gotten around to,still
Instead, they chatter, lumpen heads together,
What more pain can we cause her?
How can we join forces to destroy her?
Poking me inside with saws made of glass
While I lie cringing as the sharp sensations rise, then briefly pass.
Mouth full of ulcers, nausea,a dull ache between my legs
It feels as if I have been raped, that is what the pain is like
The blood in the tubes pours
Out and in, red,and bright,
Vomit rises.No time to shout.
I crawl the floors....throw up in a rubbish bin.
The I.V pulling at my aching veins......
Some shattered thought remains......
And I remember a house I lived in as a child
It was covered in Ivy,that grew strong and wild-
But it did not cause me pain.
I danced in its garden, soaked to the skin with rain.
My insides have changed,
But I bet the outer house is still the same.
But all the furniture crumbled, turned to dust
Because that house is my insides, and so it must.
I am like a turkey on a slab, a fattened goose, and you'd really think
'She likes her food'
Little knowing how food nauseates me,they are rude, disparaging glances-
Smells, mingling disgustingly
Feel my belly!Its ROCK HARD you see!
Don't put the blame for the bloat on me!
And know how the witches three
Feed upon what little substance I take.
"Honey!If I know you were hungry, I would have baked!"
I am.I am baking
A Cancer loaf, for the taking.
I would prefer a quick and easy death by fire.
Rather than shrinking, and stinking (sickness has a smell)
My dog knew before I was, that I wasn't well.
I am stupid for thinking anything else
Than Life will find a way(as the carers say)
To eat away at you, to gnaw you from the inside out.
All the platitudes seem dense and false.
They may be well meant, but they will never know
If they are lucky,
How just sitting in a chair is SO tiring
When ones whole body,and will to live, is fast expiring.
Copyright © Margaret Sayers | Year Posted 2016
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