Still Life

By Sara Kandler

The last time I saw you in that wine-colored polo sweatshirt was at the so-called rehab center just before your right leg started to swell, hives rising like a red tide toward your chest drawing you back to the ER where your clothes were tucked under the gurney and three days later stuffed into a Stop & Shop bag along with your hearing aids and extra batteries, nose spray, toothpicks and scraps of paper on which you wrote notes barely legible — don’t forget to call Audrey at the hospital, answer the email from the investment fund, there’s an old friend named Deborah on the list…

The Stop & Shop bag rides in the back of my Honda atop a pile of posters by eighth graders, poems and drawings of love and devastation.

I’m told to unpack my sorrow, my regrets.

I can’t bring myself to unpack a thing.

A small white hair, a tiny crumb, the scent of you, preserved.

I keep these piled up artifacts with me, instead.

Follow Sara Kandler:

https://medium.com/@sarakandler

Share your poetry:

https://www.survivingbreastcancer.org/submit-breast-cancer-story

SurvivingBreastCancer.org Resources & Support: