Chemo-Poet
I look in the mirror. “Hello, Chemo-Poet.” I am bald and
missing my left breast. I have a clean scar and can feel the
bone and my heart beneath my fingers. I feel the lost breast
living, pulsing in a jar somewhere, a pathologist’s jar,
waiting for morning, waiting to find itself home again. Hello,
Chemo-Poet, how long have you got? Most people don’t have
documents written on their bodies to remind them.
I go outside, always in disguise. I have a wig that makes me
look like Mary Tyler Moore, but not me, never me. So I won’t
wear it. Instead, I wear a scarf and wrap it around me, its
vibrant colors screaming “Gypsy, gypsy.” I wear makeup to cover the
absences of blood the drugs cause. The not-me is
beautiful, my friends say, a radiance of color and disguise, a
Mardi Gras of hope and death, a doll with missing pieces.
