Spring 2019

Dear Cancer: A letter Dear Cancer, Your species a product of evolution, taking steps down a new road armed with nothing but your own vision. Look how far you’ve come. The hundreds of thousands of mutated forms you disguise yourself in. You’re familiar to everyone, across all walks of life. Littered across headlines. Labels that can’t be lifted, outperforming many other destructors of life. Your name needn’t be uttered.

Your story doesn’t deserve to be told. But you’re there. Always. Everywhere. In one way or another.

Who planted you within me? How have you spread and grown unwantedly on my soil so quickly? I never fed you, but you fed off me for so long without my knowing. You’re rooted. In me. Why? You somehow concluded that I was the perfect vessel, not only touching me but those I love dearly. No, touch is too soft. You pierced our hearts beyond repair, shattered the remnants of hope and threw me into a war I never thought existed. When will our war be over? Your existence feeds off humanity releasing this violent emanation as you feast, prey.

Strangling every organ, constricting each limb, pervading me entirely. Why aren’t you happy with occupying 10% of me? Who told you it’s all or nothing?

Why can’t you be reasoned with?

I was writing the story of my life, but you came and took the pen. You enslaved me, master. Me being the creation, creator. The biggest battle was understanding your nature. Now I know the anger you leave in your wake, the harm and uncertainty you throw individuals into. You told me not to underestimate your abilities, how significant the consequences were to be.

You’d sewn your purpose to the deepest parts of my vessel. Your body, fluid yet so firm and anchored. I know, I’m just another number you managed to successfully invade.

Clocks, watches, all things time telling, in the house, on family members, littered in hospitals, carried around meaninglessly, glued to everyone but me. I now know of its existence. Time – this relative, irreversible process. The creator, the ager and destroyer of all things. Every tick closer to my terminal date. It’s a countdown that nobody really has any control over, but you. Time isn’t a monster, but ‘the’ monster that cannot be reasoned with.

You changed the world but more importantly people’s worlds. I walk the 22