i.
When the one she prizes
more than breath,
more than her sacred self,
when this prismatic being
plunges perilously ill,
crumbles on cancerous boulders below,
the world greys
<a foreign place>
and she a stranger in it —
an entity that appears woman
but is merely afterimage.
Quaking in the void
where he once stood
her bones weep
for all he was
and was to be
her heart (a monstrous, distorted thing)
bursts to break, to end
the shuddering into another day.
ii.
There is mercy.
In dreamy visions he comes.
Robust and wise
he comforts his mother,
offers her courage
and she clings
to the golden haze.
iii.
Stage IV, they say, and the woman
vows to save him.
She scours the aisles,
dismisses plums, guava, dragonfruit,
cups a mangosteen
pulsing in her palm.
This potent fruit
she brings to him
with rich berries, purple grapes.
Awake, asleep she seeks
solutions, combinations —
minerals, meridians, prayer —
an elixir to right
the riddle of mutated cells.
Down her throat slithers the python.
More metal than flesh, more do than feel
the woman is fearless,
indestructible.
Son, heal her son.
This is the thing and everything.
She kills the python.
iv.
Armed with Olympic dedication
he accepts all challenges
braves the gamut —
torturous treatments, tried and trial.
Ever the athlete, he calibrates,
charges into the fray —
v.
Believing
in the healing peaks
they are pink balloons
on a roller coaster’s rise
dark dominoes
tossed and toppled
when tumors progress.
vi.
What now?
The oncologist shrugs.
There are no comparables.
Such steel.
His trajectory flies
off the charts.
Trust and fear
shuffle.
vii.
He did not trip or tumble.
He did not slip then slide.
He did not stand at the edge of that vast cliff
recklessly bent.
In truth, he wanted to dance,
his children firm in his arms.
To skate until the ice melted.
To celebrate daybreak
and its morning.
viii.
Pasty sky licks the seam
sealing the beams
dense as lead
mashing him into, onto
this mucky earth.
Sweat from the bones
of that faceless sky
clings to thick
phone wire,
skews the spikes
raining upon him
flailing
in the storm.
Out of fog’s density
a cry —
Here, only here
the seam relents.
But the mist mutes,
refutes,
and he is lost.
ix.
His bedroom door dangles
from its frame
leaving space
malleable
while the lidless box stares
at things
best left unnamed —
this roofless house
its mad valve
speckling arms red
mother on her knees
rotating the bloated
his rusted possibilities
doing the math wrong
as her mind bleeds through the doorway
crouches inside the quivery box
screams at December’s claws
unhinging a son’s heart.