Not all tumours

 

I remember the day like yesterday

22 November 2007 was an eternity

to wait

 

The lung, the tumour

specialists, explorations, biopsies, a punctured lung

how damned obvious can it get?

 

Smoker’s lung, why not?

Causes and conditions

the inevitable

 

Tentacles grip tightly around hope

pacing like a cat on a hot tin roof, awaiting

more tests

 

I retreat within, the sub-titles on my face

emitting unformed language

into space

 

Pulmonologists, visions of the knife

An image of an egg, swallowed

by sleight of hand, into my lung

 

Questions, by the hundreds

 

Exposure to carcinogenic agents?

construction or painting, agriculture or forestry?

manufacturing, mining?

 

No, no, no

 

Sick leave, friends, flowers

words of comfort, tim-tams, by the box

smoking, be damned

 

Grief in one hand,

gratitude the other

the fluidity of the heart

 

The day arrives

with it, reality’s gift

‘a soft benign fibrous tumour’

 

Afterwards, ambling Lismore

   a shop window, and a pause

a tiny red ukulele

seized

 

***

 

Seventeen years hence

no change, no blade

not all tumours are cancerous