print previewback KATE DANIELS
Breast Cancer
He was a man of startlingly few words.
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(She’d known that when she married him.)
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Too late to back out now. That was what
Her mother had said, and her girlfriends,
And the priest, when she told them how
Lonely she’d become, and how she cried
In the bathroom after sex, wondering what
Had happened, or what it meant with no
Exchange of words. What she didn’t share
Was how she wrote the words herself
So she’d remember what she wanted him
To say, tracing the letters with her finger
In fog she breathed out on the mirror.
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Somehow life passes. A dream. A cloud.
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Four kids had been born, including one
Who didn’t make it. Both his parents died
In an awful span of two months, and then
The office downsized when he was forty-five.
Stolidly, he shouldered through, slashing a path
With nouns and verbs. Adjectives and adverbs
Were not his strengths. He was plot and predicate,
The sharp blades of language that mowed things
Down and straightened the remnants, and put
The world back in order, on silent mode.
She’d done what she could to mitigate the wordless
Swamp that sealed the space between them. Back
When it was young and sleek, she’d used her body
Like a compass to surmise his feelings, and sometimes
Slid over uninvited to his side of the bed, nightgown
Ruched around her waist, without waiting for a sign.
Or sat beside him on the sofa after supper
When things were bad, and stroked away
The tension bottled up. Over the years,
She adjusted her own desires, and silenced
Herself, and stepped back from all her needs.
Or at least she reached the point
Where she couldn’t hear them wailing
Anymore, and didn’t recognize
How craven was her wanting.
ζ
Somehow life passes. A dream. A cloud.
Or these days, like the images on Instagram
Flaring up, then disappearing to become
Irretrievable forever.
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You wake up, or walk out of the cloud’s fog
And find yourself seat belted in a vehicle
Beside a man who last told you how he felt
Three decades past in the stilted words
Of the marriage pact he obediently repeated
To please his family and friends.
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Long ago, she stopped wondering
Who he had become, or how he felt.
Steadiness was what he offered—
Not a soundtrack of the process.
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It’s true,she admitted to her therapist.
He never promised more.
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Use your words, she used to tell the children,
Chucking them under the chin with two fingers
And lifting their heads so their eyes met hers,
Teaching them to talk by speaking to them
In the foreign language of love.
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He drove the pickup to fetch her.
And if she hadn’t been so woozy
In the long jet stream of OxyContin’s
Afterlife, she might have wondered why. . . .
All business, he stepped down
From the cab, and grabbed her suitcase,
And strapped it in the back. Then the nurses
Helped her climb up beside him,
And belted her in, and readjusted
The wide swath of bandages enwrapping
Her chest, and placed a pillow just so
To relieve the pressure.
ζ
For weeks now, she’s been shooing her mind
Away from certain memories—the children’s
Noisy sucking at her breasts, the sharp needles
Racing through her chest when the milk surged in.
How it felt to bend over after a bath, heavy
Handfuls of warm breasts, spilling down to fill
The convex cups of a lacy bra. The modest curve
Of cleavage nature had endowed her with.
Far back, like a locket’s thumbnail portrait
Of a loved one who’s been lost, she’s enshrined
The image of his face as it was so long ago
The first time she undressed before him.
How his mouth had opened and closed
Soundlessly, and how she’d thought, then,
She knew what the words were, moving
Inside him, that he couldn’t bring himself to say.
ζ
In the hospital, the nursing staff
Kept urging her to look
Beneath the bandages
And change the dressings
By herself.
But she could not.
ζ
Before the surgery, he shook the hand
Of the oncologist, and looked down
At her, laid out on the gurney.
And though he didn’t say a word,
She knew he’d be there when she woke.
This is what marriage is, I guess. That was
Her last clear thought before she clamped
Down on the old longing to hear him fit
His feelings into words. She drove it back
In hiding, then dropped into unconsciousness.
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Almost silent, they’ve driven all the miles
From the cancer center. Back there, he shook
The surgeon’s hand, and picked up her suitcase,
And shouldered the carrier bag bulging with all
The opiates and sterile pads and plastic drains
She’d need while she was healing. He walked
Beside the wheelchair without a word, carrying
The load. This is what marriage is, I guess,
She thought again—the familiar words ringing
Differently through her brand new, breastless body.
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The Silverado was a good vehicle for getting up
The side of the mountain slowly. In first gear,
It could grind forever up a steep slope, never rolling
Back, or spinning out. He took his time ascending,
Avoiding the ruts, and while they slowly traveled
Up, she rested her eyes in the new moon’s
Milky light, admiring the verdant images
Flickering past almost like a silent movie.
When they’d bought the property on the side
Of the hill, she hadn’t wanted that much
Privacy or distance. But over time, she made
Herself adjust, and now she’s at peace
With the silence of the woods, and how it echoes
Mutely the wordless years between them.
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At first she thinks it’s trash—the scrawling line
Of white markers, marring the grassy margin
That separates the gravel road from where
The piney woods begin their hillside creep,
And wonders how they got there or why
There are so many lined up like soldiers in the dark,
And how they remind her of the cardboard sheets
The cleaner folds inside his business shirts. . . .
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He must have planned it, and written them
Out by hand, inking each one of the three words
In broad, black marker on the smooth white face
Of cardboard rescued from recycling.
And then he would have staked each sign
To a wooden shim, and hiked up the hill,
And shoved them deep in the ground, ordering
Those three words into one repeating sentence
She would read over and over, winding slowly
Uphill, strapped beside him in the truck’s dark cab
As he drove her home after the surgery
So there would be no need to speak, and he could
Go on as before without breaking his silence. 
Breast Cancer
End of the Marriage
Rethinking the Burning of Books