I referred to it as “getting sick,”
as though she went to the market
and picked up cancer with a loaf of good bread,
a nice red, and some figs.
“Try the small-cell carcinoma, it’s divine.”
“Aplastic anemia, just wonderful what they’re
doing with Chilean varietals lately.”
As though she brought it home
in a paper bag, nestled with the bread
and the wine and the figs,
seasoned it and roasted it,
plated it with rosemary and au jus,
ate it, sighing over its robust flavor,
a meal she reminded me of later,
sunken eyes shadowed waxen flesh
stretched tight over high cheekbones
describing how she consumed it,
and how it now feasts on her,
on her lungs, on her liver,
the spongy marrow of her bones,
and all along I thought it was something
she could get, something she could catch,
something in the air, universal as breathing,
when the truth is that it caught her.
