carcinoma

[toujours_nigel]

 The word hangs cigarette-smoke grey,

this habit he’s clutched close, coloured

the near-thirty years of my life,

half his life, half the life he lived

before I arrived with my part-

inheritance his mother’s smile.

 

She died of it. His father, too.

Growing up all my father’s jokes

were about not outliving them,

seeing fifty-five, retirement.

Last year they cut a tumour out

from beside his heart: and now this.

 

Can’t change people, or what they do.

My aunt’s voice, my mother’s, bitter

resignation coating their throats.

The sighing familiar tone:

how I love, eating cancerous

into their tolerant tissues.

Comments

[breathedout]

I was just thinking about my grandfather dying of lung cancer, & happened upon this. I love the last stanza in particular.

[toujours_nigel]

♥