Woman. Mother. Wife. A Poem of loss...

read slowly.  carefully.  breathe in humanity... and weep...     then join the fight...

Breast Cancer 3-Day

  

WHAT WAS LOST

What fed my daughters, my son Trickles of bliss, My right guess, my true information, What my husband sucked on For decades, so that I thought Myself safe, I thought love Protected the breast. What I admired myself, liking To leave it naked, what I could Soap and fondle in its bath, what tasted The drunken airs of summer like a bear Pawing a hive, half up a sycamore. I'd let sun eyeball it, surf and lakewater Reel wildly around it, the perfect fit, The burst of praise.  Lifting my chin I'd stretch my arms to point it at people, Show it off when I danced.  I believed this pride Would protect it, it was a kind of joke Between me and my husband When he licked off some colostrum Even a drop or two of bitter milk He'd say You're saving for your grandchildren. I was doing that, and I was saving The goodness of it for some crucial need, The way a woman Undoes her dress to feed A stranger, at the end of The Grapes of Wrath, A book my mother read me when I was Spotty with measles, years before The breast was born, but I remembered it. How funny I thought goodness would protect it. Jug of star fluid, breakable cup-- Someone shoveled your good and bad crumbs Together into a plastic container Like wet sand at the beach, For breast tissue is like silicon. And I imagined inland orange groves, Each tree standing afire with solid citrus Lanterns against the gleaming green, Ready to be harvested and eaten.

From The Crack in Everything (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996)

© 1996, Alicia Ostriker

Gallery of Breast Cancer Inspired Art