“They’re benign,” the radiologist says,
pointing to specks on the x ray
that look like dust motes
stopped cold in their dance.
His words take my spine like flame.
I suddenly love
the radiologist, the nurse, my paper gown,
the vapid print on the dressing room wall.
I pull on my radiant clothes.
I step out into the Hanging Gardens, the Taj Mahal,
the Niagara Falls of the parking lot.
~Jo McDougall, “Mammogram” from In the Home of the Famous Dead: Collected Poems

Outside the house the wind is howling
and the trees are creaking horribly.
This is an old story
with its old beginning,
as I lay me down to sleep.
But when I wake up, sunlight
has taken over the room.
You have already made the coffee
and the radio brings us music
from a confident age. In the paper
bad news is set in distant places.
Whatever was bound to happen
in my story did not happen.
But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.
Perhaps a name was changed.
A small mistake. Perhaps
a woman I do not know
is facing the day with the heavy heart
that, by all rights, should have been mine.
~Lisel Mueller “In November”

It does not escape me,
especially on call-back mammogram days
when I’m asked to return for a
“closer look” at something that
wasn’t there before.

which turns out to be a 1 cm. nonspecific solid something,
maybe getting smaller over the past ten days.

Maybe a bruise. Maybe not.
Check again in a month.
A brief reprieve that some in the
dressing cubicles around me
don’t get.

I wake every day knowing:
an earthquake happens somewhere else,
a war is leaving people homeless and lifeless,
a tornado levels a town,
a drunk driver destroys a family,
a fire leaves a house in ashes,
a famine causes children to starve,
a flood ravages a town,
a devastating diagnosis darkens
someone’s remaining days.

No mistake has been made,
yet I wake knowing recently
it was my turn to hear bad news,
my heart was heavy,
yet it
still beats,
still breaks,
still bleeds,
still believes
in the radiance of each new day I’m given.
I was reminded again today.