After a Dark Time
by Wendy Wisner
In the dream, a doctor says
cancer is growing in my body
but won’t say where. When I wake
I remember the terror
of a child growing silently inside me—
a bright cluster of cells.
Now cars glide down the street
like breath in and out of bodies.
We didn’t come to this earth
to enjoy ourselves. We came to survive.
Watch me peel off the body
of this April evening.
Look how fresh and clean I am
yet soaked through with desire,
the pink of me cleaving
under the heft of rain.
cancer is growing in my body
but won’t say where. When I wake
I remember the terror
of a child growing silently inside me—
a bright cluster of cells.
Now cars glide down the street
like breath in and out of bodies.
We didn’t come to this earth
to enjoy ourselves. We came to survive.
Watch me peel off the body
of this April evening.
Look how fresh and clean I am
yet soaked through with desire,
the pink of me cleaving
under the heft of rain.
Wendy Wisner’s third collection of poems, The New Life, was published by Cornerstone Press/University of Wisconsin Stevens-Point in 2024. She is also the author of two previous books of poems, Epicenter and Morph and Bloom. Wendy’s poems and essays have been published in Prairie Schooner, Spoon River Review, Passages North, THRUSH, The Washington Post, Lilith Magazine, and elsewhere. Wendy is currently an Associate Editor at Rise Up Review.