Friday came the news.
Her G.P. rang and told her.
The telephone buckled
in her hand. Safely distanced,
he offered to come round.
‘Why bother,’ she said, ‘Bastard.’
She had guessed anyway. The body
had been telling her for months.
Sending haemorrhages, eerie messages
of bruises. Outward signs
of inner turmoil. You can’t sweep
blood under the carpet.
Thirty, single, living with and for
a four-year-old daughter. Smokes,
drinks whisky, works in television.
Wakes around four each morning
fearful and crying. Listens to
the rioting in her veins.
Her blood is at war with itself.
With each campaign more pain,
a War of the Roses over again.
She is a battlefield. In her,
Red and White armies compete.
She is a pair of crossed swords
on the medical map of her street.