| Cancer Tears
I stare in the mirror at the hole on my forehead where the surgeon carved out a cancer. The hole is the size of a dime, the colors various shades of red, oozing white or colorless liquid running down to my eyebrows, where it drips like tears to the stubble on my cheeks. The cancer hole is crying A part of me gone awry with grief, knowing that disease can be cured but that old age gets us all. The surgeon can cut out the cancer, but he can’t stop me from getting older, and image in the mirror is not me, not the young man who, forty years ago, yearned for wisdom and cavorted naked in the sun, fearless, boundless, unaware that time is faultless and will bring on the surgeons whether I am ready or not. I will never be ready, and the cruel cut where the cancer cries will soon be an ugly scar reminding me every time I shave that regardless of how I protect myself now, I am dying. The crying dime on my forehead oozes one more tear and I shiver in my nakedness as I wipe it away terrified. Larry R. Brooks |