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A Picture Book
For Mommy's With Cancer

[Click here]
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by by Kelly Corrigan, 36 years old, Stage III Breast Cancer Survivor
Kelly writes a bi-monthly column on everyday life. If you'd like us to email her columns to you, click -->

He buttoned his overcoat,
hopped up on his stand,
and barked through a cardboard megaphone
“Cancer, Folks, In Three Rings!”
I spun around,
instinctively following the echo around the tent.
His hat was too tall,
although it may have been the lights,
dashing, rolling,
highlighting acts to come.

“In the first ring, CHEMOTHERAPY!
Watch the woman eat stick after stick of fire!
Not a hair left after last night’s show!”
The crowd jerks impulsively,
except a few winking women,
who are rising to leave.

“In the second ring! Up, up, up! On the high wire...”
I turn to notice a lone shadow against the big top
with my profile, teetering gracelessly.
Is that me? Is there a net?
“And in the third ring! Swinging from the high bars....”
a surgeon tosses a flimsy woman
through the air
towards a well costumed radiologist
while unfunny clowns press on for laughs below.
“Folks...” the barker lures the anxious imagination,
“will they catch each other?”

What if they take me away?
The unsightly midgets, the fat woman,
the cocky lion tamers...
“It could be a year...”
A year in the circus,
defying death in the ring every night?
The swirl of disarray and radioactivity,
the relentless diet of leftover popcorn,
the iridescent lights...
Will daylight break
to reveal my ordinary life,
just there, as it was, in tact?

Maybe I’ll be trapped in the circus forever,
acclimating over time,
as the other performers have,
to the lumpy accommodations,
the freakish company,
the noise of new tricks and crowd thrillers.

Or maybe my life agone will stay so
and the circus management will let me go
And I will be shown entirely new places
where people I used to know
wander.