The way
her hands were the smallest thing
I’ve ever seen on a 21 year old woman
but she wasn’t really small at all
parts of her looked smaller in her
quiet shadow panting but only when
she walked at a certain pace rushing
other parts looked strangely large
and though she would have hated
that it seemed so much more fitting
she did it so effortlessly too looking so
small and being so large at the same time
kind of the way that stars do or cancer
her pale skin lit up like ghosts in the haunting
of a heart subtle and silent at first then sudden
stark white startling when you finally saw
she held everything in one hand but not in
the palm because she’d never try to hold you
there but phone, purse, cup of coffee
the freckles on her legs reminded me of
constellations or cancer, looking glasses to her
insides in the doctors surgery and me screaming
she wasn’t poetic she was just another
dying woman slowly shrinking into the holes
of her flesh waiting for the haunting to finish.
