It was August when they told you

Tumors growing like tree limbs

Intertwined between Bronchi and Alveoli 

Needle pricks, PET scan, X-rays

Bruises reminders of last week

When you were told

Life would never be the same

Cancer lived inside you

Now you learn

Staging, size, rapid growth

Metastasis, distant spread

New words now, Familiar notes

 On the back of your throat

As you spew cancer’s wrath

From your lungs on the bathroom floor 

Six days later they start

Hours long Chemotherapy

Closed behind curtains on a rainy day

Yellow venom feeds through your veins

Like thousands of yellow jackets

Swarming to the site

Ready to kill your cancer 

Later you pull last years

Highlights from the root

Letting the strands swirl to the floor

Like flying squirrels 

Now left with a slick, bald head

 Homesick for layered warmth 

Orange bottles now line the shelves

Cautioning this and warning about that

You swallow them down with prayer 

Fentinol, Ativan, Tarciva

Too many to count, to name

Makes your mouth hot

Burning red velvet ants

Lying and lounging in your throat 

Tasting hard metal on your tongue

 No hair, hot mouth, dry skin

Feet and hands burning and tingling 

 The tumor slowly shrinking, dying

The venom doing its work

Yellow jackets feeding,

Squeezing, shrinking it down

Waiting for the beautiful words

You long to hear the doctor say

But still you wait, and wait and wait