What Happens now — by maggie hart

Artwork by Susan Cohen

I tell my friends and family that the cancer is gone (for now?) & they cry with me, they say, “We were so worried,” & I don’t tell them that I still am, that I think I always will be & I continue to get blood drawn & sometimes the numbers that are supposed to go up go up & sometimes they don’t & my friend visits & we go to the top of Pikes Peak on a train & he kisses me even though he knows I have cancer & I realize that some people will still want to kiss me, even though I have cancer & should I say had cancer?, neither sounds quite right & how do I say that I no longer have leukemia but that it is somehow still mine, still a part of me? & I drive to the Dakotas & I see Crazy Horse for the first time & I wonder what it’ll look like in fifty years & I hope that I’ll get to see it in fifty years, or maybe just thirty & I rejoice for the first time at the sight of armpit hair & I laugh more, and louder & I go on a first date who compliments my hair & I blurt out that it’s a wig because I had cancer & he doesn’t leave right away & I am not so cold all the time & when I am cold, there are fireplaces & warm beverages & large blankets, which are all such mundane miracles & I am able to go out into the sunlight whenever I want & the leaves change colors, how did I ever take that for granted before? & were they always this yellow? & I love colors that are not the beige of hospital walls & what else do I take for granted? & I rub my head with the palms of my hands & delight in the fuzzy feeling of new growth & I waste less time & I think few things are ever a waste of time & there are holidays & mistletoe & I leave out cookies for Santa with my adult siblings, because we hold on to traditions & I love that about us, how we hold on to things & hold on to each other & I never lose the feeling of wanting to hold on to the people I love & I daydream about making cookies for Santa with my nephew & I slow down & I live to see another January & everything seems possible in January & sometimes I still reach to pull my hair into a ponytail, grasping only the empty air around my exposed neck & I have heard of phantom limbs but not of phantom hair & I travel to more parts of the world I’ve longed to go & it is the love of my life, the world & I hope I don’t have to leave it too soon & will I ever be able to trust this body again? & have I ever trusted it before? & I drink lattes instead of black coffee with one Splenda & I have more dreams than before, in every way & I go to Mass & I don’t eat the bread or drink the wine, because it’s a sin if you haven’t been to Mass in so long & I am scared I’ve sinned too much & I’m scared there is no Heaven & I’m scared there is & I am so tired of being scared & I imagine my blood turning into wine, like Jesus’s did & running through my veins & I think of all the glasses of cheap wine I’ve drank & I don’t regret a single one & there is really so little I regret & there are some days that I don’t cry, not at all & some days I am less angry & the anger does not consume me & I am not who I was & that is never not a gut punch, a heartbreak & I do not think I’ll ever have enough time, even if I live to one hundred & I probably won’t live to one hundred & I find some peace with that & I find some peace in general & I keep living & living & living &

Maggie Hart is a writer, traveler, and cancer survivor from Colorado. Her writing has appeared in, among others, The Audacity, Cold Mountain Review, Little Village Magazine, and Glass Mountain.