There Is War In My Bones

I am washing my arm when the cloth slips from my hands and drops onto the floor
Fuck
I have altogether stopped attempting to bend over since the pain moved from my thoracic cage to the lumbar region
Fuck
Before I can try to lift it with my toes
A thought so profound has me involuntarily curling my spine into a sob instead of my toes around the washcloth

There is war in my bones
There is war happening in my bones
There is molecular death
There is a possibility that this pain is the sacrifice to love through the diagnosis 

Yes I know
And the only way to chart the score is through more scans, more imaging, more bloodwork
And yes, I know
You can’t “feel cancer”
Yes, I know on paper, it’s not looking good

But then I read a study about how dying cancer cells yell out to their fellow soldiers and give dying commands, and hear from the marrow-

ALRIGHT COMRADE
MAKE FOR THE BONES
THEN FOR HER JUGULAR CHAIN AND HER LIVER
CONQUER AND DIVIDE
DECAY THE BODY
TAKE HER DOWN

But then the magic!
The soul!
The anatomical makeup of my bones!
The drugs!
The doctors!
Apoptosis!
My ancestors!
The sun and my Earth mother!

All gather in rebuttal to hold the line
When defense moves to offense, I can feel it in my lymph nodes
And my beating heart as it presses onwards
Onwards
Onwards
We will go on

I cannot pick up my washcloth
But I can hold my naked body
The showerhead is too slow to wash the salt from my cries
The drops mingle and slip on my arms

I tell my body I love her
And I’m so proud of her
The multiplying scars through multiple layers of skin
Some to the bone
The muscles built from holding babies
And the loose skin around them from when they started walking

My big toe curls at the washcloth and tosses it into the air
I catch it with my left hand like I’m catching a damn amulet
And hang it on the hook before emerging from the shower 
Exiting as the conqueror of my own skeleton