soup of words
By Melissa Petrakis

We enter now
the quiet places
the long corridors
the soup
of words.

The second test
- probably nothing,
the phone call
the positive find
so negative.

The needle
aspiration
rendering
the body
airless.

The biopsy,
the surgery,
the amassment removed
and no comfort anymore
in things solid.

And the skin
turns bluish
to yellow
to pink, a
rainbow backwards.

And now the fear
of too tight t-shirts
of over-taxing
lymph nodes extracted,
phantom.

The saline fluid
then chemotherapy drugs
first one orange
then one clear
into the veins.

The soft leather
chairs
a false
incongruous
luxury.

The woman
to your right
be-scarfed,
hairless,
more a truth.

And the nausea
suppressed by tablets
but still the feeling
rising, the body
in revolt.

And imagining
the white blood cells
fighting,
fighting in depleted
numbers brave.

And again the cycling
of these fluids
first one orange
then one clear
into the veins.

We enter now
the quiet places
the long corridors
the soup
of words.

Melissa Petrakis is a poet, playwright and artist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her poetry has been published in arena magazine, Centoria, Dan Poets, Hobo, Meanjin, Moving Out Moving On: Poems of Dislocation, Postgraduate Review(University of Melbourne), SideWaLK, tiny epics. Her first book of poetry ;The Naked Muse; (Domain Press) was published in 2001; her second book ;Attic Dweller; (also Domain) was published in 2002. She can be contacted via melissapetrakis@email.com , and welcomes general comment and, of course, book orders.