Greetings

There are greeting cards for all occasions

at the hospital’s little gift shop— bar

mitzvahs, anniversaries, get-well-soon’s,

condolences— catty-cornered from the table

selling wigs, stuffed animals, chocolates—

inexpensive joys, each, that seek to distract us

from this fight against ourselves. I sit

on a stool by the cashier’s desk

and find that the most popular kind

has been the one that says Good Bye

Cancer —a vanishing stack of paper

hopes, poised to kill

our body’s reckless blossoms

in the forests beneath our skin.