Grief

Rebecca Liao

You have colon cancer. Me?

A tiny little fragile bird of a thing?

Angelic child, straight A student?

Never smoked, never did drugs?

Now I must do drugs-

Surgery failed, so chemo drugs it is.

Feeling guilt as I see those close to me cry for me, in pain for me; If it has to be me, not them.

This loss is new-

The loss of a healthy body

The loss of illusory normalcy

The loss of cancer being something that happens to "someone else".

Six months passes- school year over.

Now facing summer, more mundane now spent frequently at home.

Seven months, now eight, Try surgery again.

We thought we could do it, but it's too dangerous to proceed. Recovering from surgeryshaky, sleepy, in pain.

Still a druggie- prescribed oxycodone and returning to chemotherapy. Different drugs, but now indefinite. Interminable.

Returning to school, wincing as I roll over people's feet with my clunky rolling backpack, I think how naive it was of kindergarten me to wish to have such a thing.

I'm glad to be among friends again, regaining a normal sense of self, even if it's interrupted by chemo once a week. Yet as I roll on by, I realizeWhy do so many pressure themselves, with grades, with AP's, with physical appearance?

Some struggle with feeling overweightI ache as I continually lose pounds.

Why must any of us be bound by these chains?

Because if there's anything I've learned from crying from needles, NG tubes, sorrow, it is that what matters most is love, is life, is YOU.

Because you are a product of love AND life, a symphony and orchestrated Beautifully. Broken things are uniqueNo scar or crack is uniform. So as I struggle on, along the way I find- fragments of stars that whisper to me, "So sing now, songbird, fly."