Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry
Mind Game
A bald head curling into a torso?
That’s what the scan looked like to me.
But, it is not a fetus. It is cancer,
a tumor, and a large one, clambering
over and through my left kidney. Not
like ivy blanketing a rock outcrop, or
tree shoots pushing through long
neglected fields. Rather like the rolling
lava I witnessed during a Hawaiian
eruption as it captured vast landscapes
from summit to the sea.
I have unknowingly surrendered to an intruder.
I am mother of my own death.
I long for a surgery date as there are so many
others also nurturing stealth invaders.
How to live this slow tick of time? Did I
know that a kidney is as large as an adult
fist, as little as a fetus at 14 weeks?
That’s it! I will imagine you, Tumor, as my future
child. I will sing you endless lullabies, murmur
sweet nothings, promise to love you forever.
Will you, in turn, stop swelling, stay contained
within the territory you have already seized? Not
mount an offensive past the organ’s boundaries?
Spare me a dime. Give me more time?
We are one, you and I, until the day of your delivery,
a kind of cesarean. No one will wait for your first breath,
first cry. There will be joy at your death. Celebration
of my life. Forgive my ruse and the robot’s sleight of hand.
Terry S. Johnson recently settled in Alaska after a lifetime in New England where she performed as a professional harpsichordist before serving as a public school teacher. Moving to the “Last Frontier” has opened her writing to a new landscape of possibilities. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Driftwood, Edge, Journal of the American Medical Association, Passager, Slipstream and Technoculture. Her first book entitled Coalescence won a 2014 Honorable Mention in the New England Book Festival, and her second book Plunge launched in 2019. Her chapbook entitled “the stars, your eyes” was just published.