by Deidre Cavazzi

Everything wrapped in ribbons:
angels with swooping bows, shiny pins bulk-ordered,
pre-made ceramic cups to be painted-by-number,
embroidered hats and pre-shrunk screenprints.
The mass of marketing,
purchasing power of empathy,
our dis-ease at disease.
She slowly drowns in Forever stamps
and a sea of symbols,
everyone tying, pinning, stitching her,
walking miles for her rather than being with her.
I am more than just my cancer, my mother says,
ribbons unspooling and pooling
everywhere as we map her to the diagnosis,
forgetting to see
her through the pink.

Deidre Cavazzi is a poet and choreographer based in California. Her chapbook carapace, root & feather, is available through Bottlecap Press, and her writing appears in journals including Soundings East, Rust & Moth, Corpus Callosum, Crow & Cross Keys, Lunch Ticket, Roanoke Review, and Polarlit.