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Indian Pudding

by Christina Cook

Cream melts into our bowl of gingery
meal, while outside the window: windfull 
of blackening sumac. An up-gust silvers it,

Well, the tumor's growing again 
scents the air with an autumn
molder Yankee Candle couldn't 
shoehorn into a jar.

so they've stopped my treatment.
Indian pudding coats 
our throats with its amber warmth.
The sky is the color of her

I felt like a guinea pig, anyway.
beads, and speaks of promises
barometers make. But the air is under 
too much pressure to keep them,

so I begin a new treatment on Monday.
so it bursts into brilliant orange-
red vortices of fallen leaves, 
astonishing the lunch crowd.

She licks her spoon and smiles, 
Fourth time's a charm.

Christina Cook is a poet and translator whose work has appeared in a number of journals. This poem was inspired by the strength, courage, and optimism her mother showed when going through treatments for breast cancer. "Indian Pudding" is dedicated to her mother, Linda Jason.