Breast Cancer at the Beach

from where does cancer come anyway?

my plump funny mother says,

in diet coke, coffee, and mcdonald’s hamburgers.

why does it keep living then when you stop feeding it?

why is it the more it lives, the more she starts to die?

i am questions.  i am eight.

the world is pink-toned, the skies

squint with me in this lazy afternoon sunshine.

i am not old, and am covered with pale child’s skin like hers was, i wonder

am i also baby’s skin in white fuzz and rocks

growing underneath?

your hair is bunny soft – she says – as her ifngers

Play in the hairs against my cheek

and laughs, she closes her eyes, into my hair

two shades darker than hers.

my mother is amused.  Her eyes

lower to meet my wide black ones.

he said sometimes the hair grows back in a darker color, she says, hah,

maybe this time around I will be a brunette, and smiles;