Loss of movement

The worst part is holding still

as the machine hums around me.

On the wall are rows of heads

made of thermoplastic, masks

to guide the precision of poison

meant to kill this cancer.

I’ve named my cancer a dozen times

while I lie there and imagine

the silent beams of radiation.

Twenty treatments in, I grew tired

of this and named the masks instead,

hoping they could give me comfort.

Between chemo and radiation I can’t decide

which I like worse, but I keep coming back—

just like my cancer, two times, now three—

to prove that I am stronger than this

malignancy. That I can hold still.