The 24th of June

I remember the anxiety during the drive there

The way the sweat raced from my forehead to my cheek

I remember how that awful place looked like a villain’s secret lair

And how his worst victims stayed for more than a week

I remember my mother, his most successful project

He appeared before her when I was thirteen

We never noticed how he’d always been there unchecked

Until the day he announced it was time for eating

He ate at her tongue, and she couldn’t speak without a wince

And then he ate at her throat and she couldn’t eat at all

He took away her sense of taste, she hadn’t been the same since

He ripped away her voice, and we couldn’t hear her pleading call

They called him Cancer, a being hated and feared by all

I should never have underestimated him

Because he shattered the sky and made it fall

And my mother was a game he had started on a whim

He toyed with her body and broke it down slowly

Then he took her will to live

And on June 19th, he said “five days” coldly

Five

Four

Three

Two

It’s the 24th of June

I thought I’d visit her the next day

But on the 24th of June he took my mother’s life away.