Cancer Pavilion
I enter the building
marked "Cancer Pavilion"
in ten-foot high letters,
as if to confront
the disease,
stare it down,
manage the fear.
In the lobby I pass
spectral patients
in treatment,
the unnaturally thin,
the hairless. I want
to explain myself:
Excuse me,
I'll just be a minute.
I really don't belong here –
I'm cured, you see;
just here for a follow-up,
not for surgery
or radiation or chemo,
like you.
I feel myself stepping
too heavily through
the lobby,
taking up too much
space in the elevator,
my conspicuous health
giving offense
to the others
in the oncologist's
waiting room.
I am not one of them:
my color is too good,
my hair too firmly attached,
my posture too straight,
while they endure
the interminable waiting
sunken in their chairs,
eyes fixed on something
I cannot see.
Appearing in Before It All Vanishes
