For Rosa, Memorial Hermann Northeast Cancer Center
How do your hands stay so warm
when you are in a meat locker all day?
When the radiation machine requires
sub-arctic temperatures in cavernous rooms
for existence.
This is what it takes to
scare cancer,
to resist turning into an icicle.
Hope is warm hands on skin,
adjusting body into angles.
A beam of radiation here, a direct shot
there. A lift, a guide, a gentle direction to stay
still, arm over your head,
to blast the poison away.
It’s not the pain of the treatment that wounds,
but the aftermath.
Slowing of bodies,
words escaping tips of tongues.
Hair thinning & falling.
But what remains,
always remains,
is gratitude for another day to fight,
& a pair of warm hands.