Category: haiku

I usually avoid personal posts here as I want to focus on writing and ideas (and diary-like entries are usually boring for casual readers), but I’ve been thinking about cancer a lot lately + I wrote a nice little haiku (about chemo):

Follicles fallow?
Consider hirsute respite
Head skin relaxing

This was for my good friend Mal’s support site (they are having a hairless haiku contest thing there).  It’s discomfiting to have a friend undergoing this (cancer, chemo, port surgery, etc.).  I’m just so powerless. I’m not religious; I’m not a good baker; I’m medically inept (though I know a modicum about herbs; I sent her some info on that); I don’t have a useful crafting skill; and sie’s one of the funniest people I know (I can’t make hir laugh – my ridiculousness is mild by comparison); physical hijinks are out (when one of us is too sick to jump). All I can do is wait and see. And even though I love all my friends, this particular one is exemplary in many ways (one of hir jobs is working as a clown for sick children, sie volunteers time with LGBT youth, walks dogs, etc.) and it just seems horribly unfair.

Also, one of my coworkers (my boss’s boss) has the big C and she’s super-nice and capable (one of the too-rare woman in a position of responsibility) – I see her daily in flamboyant headscarves. She’s cheerful and seems OK, but it’s still worrisome/sad. And I know of several friends who have recently or are about to lose parents or siblings to cancer.  I always knew cancer was a bad thing (my aunt had it years ago, but we were distant), but it always seemed abstract, like nuclear war or something.  It’s scary. This form of dancing is like dancing away from a chasm that suddenly opened up.