What a loss!

 The oncologist and I sit eyeballs to eyeballs—mine frozen 

in fear as if he’d pointed a gun at me and cocked it—and 

His lips keep moving:  It’s too small to bother about. 

Pop, pop, pop! This man’s words! 

Too small too small . No spider webs! 

What a rush! 

As if robins hatched in the hidden 

nests of my body

and the doctor and this white room fall away

and I see the sky is blue and I cannot 

find enough words.  

This body is mine again, returned whole

from the morgue! 

A tiny black comma on your scan. Go home. 

Run, baby, run! 

I will! I will!

Every hair on my head, my arms, brows,

inside my ears--

feels like a bee sting!

I am not dead! 

There is a sudden intrusion of sunlight

into my grave, now empty.

So this thing has gone from nothing 

to everything

to this!

The weight of me changes again.

All my frantic notes to friends—

all that needless suffering,

And looking back to my near death,  

I admit to a freakish excitement, 

a kind of shocking sense of new adventure. 

I will be dying soon, I was thinking,

and all will be known.

What a loss!

What a sensational loss!