You used to be the one to argue with me.
Mom! Stop thinking I’ll end up
like that kid in Maryland last year.
Most teenagers get home safe from prom.
After 9/11, you convinced me to fly again.
Four planes crashed that morning, Mom.
Out of thousands. Think of the odds.
Once, I admired the way
you ate sushi without my fear of parasites,
rode in a hot-air balloon, learned to scuba dive.
But now the voice I hear from your lips
sounds like mine before
we’d heard of drugs named
Avastin and Oxaliplatin.
Don’t get your hopes up, Mom.
You wave off my Lance Armstrong stories
shove away books titled,
Beating the Odds or You Can Win!
And my tears
over having taught you too well
drip from a thick plastic bag
down to the port
surgically implanted
beneath the left clavicle
of a man we both love.
Mom! Stop thinking I’ll end up
like that kid in Maryland last year.
Most teenagers get home safe from prom.
After 9/11, you convinced me to fly again.
Four planes crashed that morning, Mom.
Out of thousands. Think of the odds.
Once, I admired the way
you ate sushi without my fear of parasites,
rode in a hot-air balloon, learned to scuba dive.
But now the voice I hear from your lips
sounds like mine before
we’d heard of drugs named
Avastin and Oxaliplatin.
Don’t get your hopes up, Mom.
You wave off my Lance Armstrong stories
shove away books titled,
Beating the Odds or You Can Win!
And my tears
over having taught you too well
drip from a thick plastic bag
down to the port
surgically implanted
beneath the left clavicle
of a man we both love.
