From my bedroom window,
I can see a lime green ribbon
Constricting itself around a tree.
Lynching the last inch of life
From a being
That stood strong for a half of a century.
As each leaf wilts and falls it is a reminder that nothing is ever permanent.
Everything dies eventually.
In our family,
Green is worn proud
Above our hearts
The star of David guiding us on our way
But something to be ashamed of.
A color that condemns our family to endure your sympathetic stares
That follow us everywhere.
It is as if we are the main attraction of your circus:
Come see the dying, the crying, and the bald.
But to us, one ribbon wrapped around are hearts
Represents a million words wrapped into one.
Especially the ones never said.
The I love yous
The I need yous
The I’m sorrys
And the goodbyes
It is an endless cycle
Of CAT scans, and chemo, and radiation, and surgery, and blood tests, over and over.
If only to slow the process of
Cells detonating themselves
In a body that was never strong enough to fight it.
Strong arms cannot hold the weight of their daughter’s broken hearts
Or their sons missed football games,
Or their wives plan less anniversaries
When they carry their own mortality
We never knew that our man of steel,
Would become our man of sleepless nights,
No longer able to carry his children to bed at night.
The only person to guide through our disjointed lives
What ifs become your safe haven as well as your nightmare?
And your reality becomes mixed with fatality.
And eventually, you don’t know the difference.
Prayers become a lost hope,
Church becomes a last resort
And treatment becomes useless
Because it is a diagnosis that no one can escape.
I never understood “When someone is diagnosed with cancer, everyone around them is as well.”
And dad know that when I look into your lifeless eyes
Mine will mirror it.
