In the same breath they use to introduce themselves,
three men in white coats ask if I have
tingling in the privates.
One asks it while my hand is still in his.
I want to make a joke but he’s
not smiling.
It turns out the pain is a creature I’m growing. The creature
I’m growing lords over the nerves of walking,
continence and love.
These pot-bellied oracles seem pleasantly surprised I can
walk without turning in circles and that I can
feel my legs and face.
Because it’s big, says the big one and I can tell
he’s a little impressed.
He leans back
and rattles off a long Latin word
that translates roughly to
you’re fucked.
My husband asks him to spell it
a couple of times just
to be sure.
Hippocrates once held a tumor in his hand
and called it karkÃnos. Our word
came later, to name
a constellation. Cancer is 590 light years away.
On a clear, cold night, light
that hurtled itself
toward my ancestors—those long-gone lords
of Cumnor and Kent—finally
finds an eye in me.