Diagnosis

this ghost song of my own
—Lisa Sewell

Cancer now a song sung low: melody’s long exhale
the melismatic languor

of high summer’s relentless shimmer. The brightest
mornings, yes,

still remember the coldest burn of your mid-
winter hopes.

Diagnosis reaches us through air-conditioning
—followed quick

by dye injection, by lidocaine, by the carefully
controlled somnolence

of anaesthesia. (Song sung low, this lullaby a
cocktail

of morphine and the lesser pain meds, the slather
of lotions

and the photographic record of your breast’s
diminishing blueness.)

One week later, when the nurse gives her authoritative
nod it cuts

through heat, through sudden chill, offers the curative
of practical

experience, that old song sung on auto, like the hum
of some machine.

Kate Middleton is the author of Fire Season (2009), awarded the Western Australian Premier’s Award for Poetry; Ephemeral Waters (2013), shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Award; and Passage (2017).