Cancer

Every day she reckons sugar, gluten--she’s so careful.

Every night she mixes seeds and petals, blends
the blood of pomegranates--the taste is sour.

Every noon she comes down on her knees 
and palms and 33 bones of spine--
from skull to coccyx--curl then straighten 
like a ladder up into lastingness--
life loves her body, 

ferments in her seeds, her tailbone, 
her sour juice. 
And would have grown day by day, 
sip by sip, 
downward-face by downward face 
had not the virus, 
that dead and living stalker, 
enraged every spore of her diligently examined 
breast.