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Awaiting the Cure

by Joshua Gray

Someday the surgeon
won't have to dig a hole
in my foot,
and no plastic
surgeon will need to fill the hole
with a speck of skin
from my thigh;
there will be a time
when my groin isn't sliced open
to find a node,
or worse, a train
of nodes -- no resident will staple
my open wound, along with
my gentle spirit --
but that day will come
after the soul has left this body:
nobody
has led the way, though the world is full
of those who've tried;
and while the world waits
I fight
to claim my skin,
awaiting the cure
to creep into the glass slide, the petri dish,
the arms of Everyman.

Joshua Gray lives outside of Washington DC with his wife and two boys and works in the city as an operations and IT manager. In 2010 he was diagnosed with stage III Melanoma just a few weeks after his 40th birthday and one year after his mother-in-law passed away from pancreatic cancer. Recovering from several surgeries at home, he began to document his emotions through poetry and is now in his second year of recovery.