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).
