It was breast cancer awareness month.
After being forced to ask for donations
for six hours, an onslaught of confirmation
and denial, mostly denial, I asked a woman
old and sour face, green shawl swooped over
the curved mountain of her shoulders,
if she would like to make a donation
and, certain she'd say no, I almost missed
the sad scrunch of her face, like pinching
the wet and puckered chicken skin.
Her face molded into it's self with sadness
and all her wrinkles deepened, the limpness
of her thin hair sagged into the grooves
of her forehead. Through bouts of agony
she nodded, explained her mother was fighting
stage three cancer while I scanned
the pink note, a floppy representation
of the ribbon with a blank box for signatures.
I handed it to her and she wrote a note
to her mother, telling her to fight on.
I placed my hand to her shoulder and felt
the world move, like a finger on Tangshan
as all the ink stones and rice bowls rattled
into a great pit of earth, so too did I shake
and the both of us, trembling, rocking
took in her wobbly message: Fight on,
Faye Lively, mom, fight on
and I couldn't help thinking any woman
with that last name, couldn't know when
to give up, shouldn't know what it's like
when the Earth falls open.
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