The Quiet Thief

It doesn’t take you all at once,

It nibbles.

A half night’s sleep here,

a fragment of appetite there,

a rib of laughter you can’t quite reach anymore.

Cancer rearranges your reflection until you’re squinting at the stranger staring back.

It’s patient,

almost polite,

until the day you realize there is more of it than you,

and the map of who you were has been redrawn in scars.