Bleach your hair,
get drunk on champagne,
pretend the left and right halves of your face are the exact same,
ignore and deny it, laugh loudly–too loudly,
m a n i a c a l l y.
Tell the people who love you to stop asking after you,
snort tears up your nose and then down your throat,
take extra moments in bathroom stalls,
let the cool hand dryer blow in your eyes
water the plants so often that the house smells of mildew,
whisper Live! to the plants, and
Congratulations! to pregnant women.
Get bold–or brash, shake the champagne bottle before uncorking it,
Don’t listen when you don’t care to,
possibly, tell patients, your middle name is now “condom”
when they have unsafe sex, and
I l o v e y o u
when they are dying of liver failure.
Walk around town in your pajamas,
the red ones with stripes and radishes on them,
look people in the eyes,
ask for more money,
read your poems aloud to poets
drop your bagel on the hospital bathroom floor
and eat it anyway.
10 thoughts on “This Is How You Cope With Cancer”
fabulous poem of living in the moment, coping with the diagnosis, and becoming very very real and true to yourself.
I want those pajamas.
Thank you for sharing deeply. I have a habit of being more authentic since being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And since my son was diagnosed with bone cancer. He was first and then me. Surprisingly, and against all statistics that I read feverishly, we are both still alive and, in spite of long range effects from chemo and irritating effects from exemestane, are both thriving. I have never felt “brave” or like this was a “battle.” But, I have done things I would have shied away from before. Like apply for a doctoral program, get gastric sleeve surgery, and move away from a town, job, and people that annoyed the shit out of me. Now a graduate medical education librarian, I support residents, fellows, and faculty in their research. By the way, the librarian that works with you, they’d like to be included as an author. Thank you for your service. You’ll help save the life of someone who is either grateful or pissed. I am one of the grateful ones. Hugs from six feet.
I Love this poem – life is short, and unpredictable. Being a 2 time cancer survivor- I know the uncertainty and this year many have with COVID
this made me laugh, it made me celebrate, and it made me say “Hell Yeah”
thank you for writing and sharing this – and I wish you great fortune in blasting those cancer cells away.
Love it!!!
I loved this poem. It was an ode to living a bit unhinged–like keeping the mask on didn’t matter so much anymore. Maybe we should all live a little more like this. And doctor like this too. Thank you Justine!
Eating a bagel off of the hospital floor.
Telling a person in liver failure “ I love you”
Shaking up a bottle of unopened champagne.
Would be good to live life without cancer this way.
Because we never know…
Excellent, moving poem!
Wonderful piece. Many thanks for sharing it. When my father was in what turned out to be the last couple of years of his life (he had bladder cancer), I wrote him a poem called Laughing Matter. Happy to share it. I’m at dan_yashinsky@hotmail.com.
This is a spectacularly beautiful poem and should be displayed in every oncology ward.