“I have never seen
someone dance so gracefully
across a minefield.
Too many tracks
across your young skin
amidst the sparkly polka dots
of your freckles.
How you ride those
searing rails of your incisions
like they were
smiles, I don’t know.
Maybe you don’t know either
and maybe you are tired
but how you burn
those curving flames
with your limbs
like you are on fire
and will burn fire with fire.
And no dose of radiation
can obliterate your radiant
unfolding body in space
your determined
breath that lifts your
arms to the heavens to say
not yet
because you are here on a mission
and have more than a million
dances left
to dance out the devils
and burn out the toxins
with your light.
Tonight, I hold your
light in my mind
your smile in my mind
your dance in my heart.
Your dance will outsmart
even the most stubborn
cancers.”