Version 2.0

At the peak of the mountain, she sat on a ledge

The rustling wind twirled up her tiny curls

As the first light of dawn, crept up the sky’s edge

Two tears glistened in the first light, like pearls.

Just two, for that was her budget, for joy.

In the year gone by, she had run out of tears

The cancer, her spirit, they said, would destroy

But all it destroyed was her form and her fears.

For now, she had risen from the metaphorical ashes

Or real, for those drugs seared every cell in her being

And yes, the surgeon’s knife and the still healing gashes,

Radiating blasts of heat on the last cancer cells, fleeing.

You’d think, those hospital rooms would have trapped,

With their sealed windows, pale walls, and a grey metal bed

Any lingering strands of compassion, hope, faith, sapped

Like that strength and the blood, from her drying veins, red.

But no, they did not, she just pretended it was routine.

Those somber looks, long words, and bloody test after test,

Stripped and strapped and thrust in a confined throbbing machine

Again and again, just a fading smile, but not once a protest.

Slowly, then faster, it happened what they’d told,

Food became an enemy, each morsel, a battle, lost or won?

Pain became her companion, unruly, uncontrolled

Sleep, a rarity, with shattering nightmares often, undone

And then, the mirror, did it’s job and started showing the truth,

She was sinking in, fading out, losing color, her spark,

It was going, clump by clump, her jet-black thick hair, youth,

Her eyebrows, her fingernails, white lips parched, stark.

Slowly, sorely, days went by, then weeks, then months,

In that frail body, a war was being won, hour on hour,

Those mean bitter drugs, battling at each organ’s fronts

Destiny, a rare sight, kneeling to medicine or willpower?

Hooked to the IV and drugs, each chemo, her pictures I took

Going frail, hairless, and nauseous, yet well dressed and smiling,

To remember how hitting rock-bottom, changes your outlook

To life, desires, dreams, and all that time has been mindlessly filing.

The treatments ended, the doctors smiled, the nurses celebrated

Her body was maimed, poisoned, poked, probed, cut and burnt,

But the cancer was destroyed, almost, and her spirit, liberated

A few bad cells, confined, hid, where the drugs couldn’t hunt

So now she had a new chance at life, dreams, and desires,

To remind her of this change, her new hair grew curled

Not boring straight, like the mirror was used to, for years.

She built back her strength, her spirit unfurled.

The mountains, they called her and there she went

To rejoice in her tryst with destiny’s, end

Or it’s beginning, who knows, life’s intent

From that ledge, at dawn, her world was on the mend.

*Written as part of Writeclub Bangalore’s session on Victim and Victor. Inspired by a family member who beat cancer in style.