Pocket Change: Two Years

A poem for an undesirable anniversary

Two years ago, on March 17, 2023, I learned that I had Triple Negative Breast Cancer. The diagnosis came to me via a digitally scanned lab result after a torturous three weeks of testing and waiting. I had obsessively refreshed my inbox for days until finally, at 5:01 p.m. on a Friday, it was there.

When it arrived, I left the house and drove to a muddy trailhead where I often hike. Alone in my car, I logged into my medical portal, and waited for the pdf that would determine my fate to download. When it appeared on my screen, the letters seemed jumbled into words I could not understand. I read them over and over, in stunned, paralyzed quiet. I kept thinking about the lab tech or radiologist who had, minutes earlier, had the job of uploading the results—the person who had to send such news to a person they did not know. I shivered with my seatbelt on. On the other side of the windshield tree limbs shuddered in drippy, harsh wind. Nothing was familiar.

Today, I run my fingers through strange, fledgling hair. I experience each day in a body that is still strange to me, too—this body, my body, that incomprehensibly withstood so much all those months. It survived. It is here, healed, healing; changed forever.

This is a hard day to memorialize. In honor of the many things I do not and will not ever know, I am sharing a poem with you. I wrote it four months into treatment, in July 2023.

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EIGHT WINGS 
Lindsay Gardner

Today I saw four butterflies. 

The first was dead —
fragile body
tumbled in waves, 
against an old, hard stone


The second lay prone —
soaked and tender
blinking, 
for the sun to dry its fancy wings


The third flew —
ecstatic triumph
bowing 
before the waterline


The fourth, I nearly crushed — 
crouching as it was
aside my clumsy feet

low
paused
it clung to a rock

filament legs
wings whipping 
fickle wind
waiting 

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