Taken In Plain Sight

At first, it is only a shadow in the corner,

you tell yourself it will leave, yet

it nibbles at your mornings.

Your coffee grows cold.

Your hunger fades,

not just for food, but for the life you’d been living.

Cancer steals the weight from your body,

and leaves something heavier behind.

Friends say you’ve changed,

you wonder if they mean you are disappearing.

Every mirror becomes an interrogation.

Every scar, a tally mark you did not agree to, and

by the end, it is not content with just pieces.

Cancer wants your name,

your story,

the map of who you were;

and slowly you realize you have been vanishing in plain sight.