No. 3

Fall 2002

It has been over a year since Julie waved
aside the wheelchair and walked in her own
bright bones out of that sterilized chamber,
walked out into air that four weeks ago
would have killed her. I'm worried that
thinking about cancer, writing about cancer,
will start cancer growing again inside her.
Where in that wide heavens, where in that
sweet void inside her could it be hiding?
I rise up on my toes and kiss one of my angels,
and in that kiss beg her to take a stiff broom
to this talk. Sweep the cancer back across the
heavens. Do not miss one crumb of it. Sweep
the cancer back into its black box of oblivion.

Copyright 2002, John Rybicki

nidus is an online publication supported by the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh's English Department.