I Am Done WIth Your Cancer

I hold my body like it is a river
in a storm. Throat swelling.
Heartburn. Clamminess.
I know these well. The doctor
does not know if it is a virus
or an anxiety attack or both

but my mom thinks it’s esophagus cancer.
And I want tell her that not everything
is cancer
but the lump in my throat
is a rock in running water.

When my dad finds out about
the antidepressants, I can feel
the river splash out of my eyes. As if
the body can no longer contain itself. As if
the body was built to destroy itself.

Why are you so depressed all the time?
he asks indignantly in the ER,
as if rivers never flood
the land around it. As if the body
was never meant to step outside of itself.
Rocks grind against the stream

and I want to tell him that
I’ve always seen him as a marble statue.
Hardened. Unmoving.
I’ve been taught these
like all boys have.
Have had rocks shoved down my throat
so that I have to throw them up on my desk

for examination. My room is a geologist’s dream.
A museum of Earth’s history. Chunks of the Roman
Coliseum have been hung on the wall. My floor is painted
camouflage green. I can smell the sweat of
Thermopylae staining
the air. I hope you like this art,
Father. I feel sick from its violence
every day. The violence of men.

It has no room for the body without pain.
“The body is pain. Pain is manliness.”
But pain is an artform.
I am the master of it. The master
of choking myself with masculinity.
Shove it down the throat
and fill my body with your gemstones, Lover.
I can take it. I know this all too well.
The way we force the body into another body.
Rocks into rocks. Men into men.
I want our bodies to turn into rivers
so that we can flow through each other,
but the water turns into vomit
and wants to throw itself out of my body,
throw itself out of the stomach
that has been filled up
with alcohol and mom’s spaghetti
and pills for years now
but I choke it down
I choke it down
because I am the master of pain

I choke it down
and throw it up on the page
because this--this is an artform

I choke it down
and throw it up in the ER.
Baggies fill up with stones.
The nurse asks if I ate
anything this morning.

I want to tell her that I have eaten
too much for years now. That’s why my body
is soft and falling apart and turning inside out
but I don’t tell her this because you are there.
You are there, Father. Standing there like you always do.
Like you always have. Marble statue. And you would love to hear that.
You’ve tried to shove a diet down my throat for years now
so I can be hardened and unmoving but I am done with your rocks
Father. I am done with your cancer, Father. My mother made me soft
but you made me an artform. I’m letting my body take control of itself.

If it wants to kill me, let it kill me. When my mother tells me that it’s cancer,
I let her, because she is a river flowing through this house. The same storm,
the same force of destruction that I never let myself be. I learn this from her.
Is this why she left you, Father? So she could teach me about the body?
So she could teach me how to escape from myself? Every oversized meal
she makes, every pill she gives me, I can feel her reaching down my throat,

pulling out a rock,
waving it in my face,
and saying,
I told you it was cancer.
Listen to your mother. Why won’t you
listen?

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I Am Done WIth Your Cancer