Dream of the Cancer Cure


Imagine: instead of fighting the tumor
with knives, radiation, chemicals,
we feed it — like summer picnickers who,
tired of swatting the buzzing swarm,
lay out a separate plate of meat
and cheeses for the bees.

While the tumor calmly swells
onto its bedside petri dish of food, nourished
by everything it needs and wants,
you lie in bed — read People, knit a scarf,
chat with your aunt Ezgi on the phone.

Until one day the cancer is no longer in you
at all — but a pulsing mass grown separate
on its tray. That now the surgeon will cut free,
severing veins and arteries that once
bound it to you like a baby. Deliver you of it —
carry it howling and dripping away.


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