oncology

one day
i’ll look into a mirror
without the memory 
of swinging my feet to an empty beat 
in cold hospital waiting rooms

one day 
i’ll stop trying to feel less
i’ll let go of all of this
a surgical knife 
a lost life 
the last thing i remember 
before i went under
is my mother's kiss
once, twice,
lights out.

one day
people will stop calling me a miracle
there was nothing miraculous 
about a little girl growing up too fast

one day
i will make room for poems
in my dresser 
instead of prescriptions

one day
each of my organs will 
combust upon themselves
the butterflies in my stomach
will turn into moths
the lump in my throat will be a tumour
and nothing else

the ruins within me
will stop being poetry

i will be nothing more 
than a body
fragmented
but indelible in the way that i survived 
through all of this destruction