Outside This Body

Nov 1, 2011 | 2011 Fall - Out in the Workplace, Poetry

By Sierra Baker

Outside this body
Cut from here to here
Listening from ear to ear
Not me, not in me, not this body.
He said “Cancer . . .”
Cancer, did I hear right?
Correct me, (PLEASE!). Cancer?
I questioned my being
I could see it playing in my head.
Lay on the table
Cut from here to here
Then I was there
“Lay on the table Ms. Baker . . .”
I thought cut from here to here?
“It’s time for anesthesia,” I hear
5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . I pass out after I scream,
“Don’t put her next to me, she snores!” . . .
And I wake up
I feel the cuts from here to here
Voices of doctors and nurses I hear
On morphine, pain unknown I fear
My new life as a survivor
No more lies. Come out, no more hiding.
A bi cancer survivor, I don’t hear them anymore,
No more lies, no more hiding, just me.

Sierra is a college student in the process of transferring to Middle Tennessee State University, where she will be majoring in Sociology and Women and Gender Studies.

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