What was just an ordinary morning

What was just an ordinary morning,
Showering, soaping, realised a lump.
No, no, just put it out of my mind.
Shall I ignore it? Is it a warning?

No one likes mammos, no one likes needles.
I don’t have the time. I’m making a fuss.
It’ll be cold, it’ll be painful.
I think I might faint, or scream or be feeble.

Radioactivity, wires, blue dye.
Corridors, ultrasounds, so many people.
Oh, so confusing these surgical choices!
At least with my nurse, with her I can cry.

Wet and immersed as Damien Hirst’s shark,
A formalin tang to the nose,
A bright yellow greasy breast lump for
dissecting – here my pathologist’s work.

Waxy and fragile like a butterfly’s wing,
Islands and creeks of fuschia and pink,
Seen in the light, soaring above,
Cancer as landscape, but just a hair thin.

What name then to give it? Does it invade?
Tumour cells fixed in violet and rose.
Where are the edges? Is it all out?
Write a report, a stage and a grade.

A tumour within me, a tumour now out.
This thing was of me but also against me,
Reduced to a name, reduced to a number.
Curves on a graph, all my life’s now about.

Then more appointments, then some more drugs.
Discuss radiation – God, not more visits.
Feeling so sore, feeling so ugly,
Never mind clinics, do you do hugs?

Poem contributed by Ian Chandler.

Photo by Trude Jonsson Stangel on Unsplash