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.
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Das, L.T. Greetings. J Med Humanit 40, 285 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-018-9518-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-018-9518-0