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REFLECTIONS

Poetry

807 Cathedral Street, 2nd Floor, Baltimore, MD 21201, (410) 727-4947

Brownies

I want to ask the young woman
in the light pink leotard
seated next to me in this café
if the dark hand of breast cancer
has ever touched her,
while she’s paying her
bill and gathering her things,
as Lori and I decide
on the brownies and ice cream.

When the two large white bowls
arrive at our table today,
a week after my surgery,
on the first day of gorgeous weather,
on the first day I’ve been out,
I know I’ll finish
the brownies
and the vanilla ice cream too,
the thin line of syrup
pooling a bit
in the bottom of the bowl.

The syrup’s sticky on the spoon
but that’s ok –
it’s sweet, harmless, unless I count the calories,
which I’ll do some other time,
but not while Lori and I
are eating the most popular item here,
the two of us talking and laughing
in front of this window,

where the cherry trees are blooming
all around the park,
and the only thing I feel
that’s touching me now
is sun.

Restoration

Paul, the plumber, comes today
to fix what’s broken:
my john that won’t flush,
the stopped up sink,
the worn out cold water valve
in the shower.

I watch him walk in the door
carrying his metal tool box.
I hear him sigh as he runs
back downstairs
to get a new piece of pipe
out of his truck.

Now he’s back in the bathroom,
whack, whack, clang.
I like looking at that shiny new pipe
Knowing whatever’s damaged
can be repaired.

Later today
I go to my last radiation treatment.
Over the next few weeks
my body will repair itself,
slowly, cell by cell.

I’ll come home afterwords
to hot and cold water again:

Do you have happy pipes?my Mother
asks when she calls

Yes, I tell her.
The water’s flowing, I think
everything’s ok.

Sewing Patterns

The worst part about the biopsy
wasn’t the injection—

it was the way the needle
removed those few swirling cells.
The sound reminded me
of a sewing machine,
drilling its way
along to outer edge of my breast.

And sewing is not a good image for me:
it takes me back to Junior High School –
a D in Home Ec class.
Even when the other girls showed me,
I couldn’t thread the bobbin.

I cut as close as I could to the pattern
on the smooth brown paper
but I wasn’t close enough –
bad edged, my teacher said.

By mistake, I cut off an apron tie,
then flunked the final.

Even now, forty years later,
if I walk into a craft shop
and happen to see those dress patterns
piled up along the racks,
I turn away,

I see the ghosts of shirtwaists
botched back in Home Ec class

where, despite my uneven buttonholes,
and my lopsided stitches,
I just wanted to know
everything would be all right.

This Article Full Text (PDF) eLetters: Submit a response to this article Purchase Article View Shopping Cart Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services E-mail this article link to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Reprints/Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Falconer, S. E. Search for Related Content PubMed Articles by Falconer, S. E.