Screening

Two days to my birthday,

seven to the lump—

the tiny split-pea in my breast

that grew into an unwelcome empire.

Twice, I asked. Twice, they said no.

Too young.

Come back at fifty, they said.

Guess what?

I never made it.

You spread yourself inside me,

an uninvited tenant with a destructive party crew,

stealing eight centimetres of my flesh,

too big to carve away.

So I poisoned us both temporarily.

Had we met years earlier,

maybe I could have fought you differently.

But instead—

you took my breast,

my hair,

my lymph nodes,

my hip,

my vision.

You took my confidence,

my family,

my goddamn future!

And yet, the Task Force calls this a success.

They weigh my suffering against their scales

and decide the harms don’t outweigh the benefits

of catching you early.

They say I am living proof

that screening at forty isn’t worth it.

But tell me,

how is being a shell of who I was

a success?

And what did you leave me?
Statistics.

Percentages.

Countdowns.|
Four in ten will meet you.

Thirteen percent of women will bow to you.

Fourteen percent will not survive you.

At stage four, only twenty-three percent
live past five years.

Two to three years, they say.

A blink.
A breath.

A slow goodbye I refuse to whisper.

And yet—

I am still here.

A unicorn in a sea of ghosts.

Janice.

Marloes.

Libby.

Yvette.

Robin.

Each name, another wound.

Each loss, a weight.

Each death, a debt of grief

we carry in our bones.

You spread inside me,

but you didn’t come alone.

Your army built their camps,

their fires,

their siege on my body.

Evicting you is a battle already lost,

but I fight anyway.


I fight the fatigue,

the burning radiation,

the chemo-cracked lips,

the poisons that save me

and the side effects that steal me away.

And the world?

The world does not wait.

The bills do not soften.

You stole my career,

my studies,

my income.


You left me a single mother

with two young hearts to raise,

with a Jack Russell to walk,

with a monthly insurance payment

that barely covers—
never grows with inflation—

less than half of what I once earned.

They call it long-term disability,

as if it’s just another checkbox,

as if it isn’t the unraveling

of everything I built.

You took.
And you took.

And you took.

But I—

I am still here.
I am here in my voice,

in the echoes of my life,

in the pages of research

that might one day write you out of existence.
I am here in the moments
I steal back from you,

in my daughter’s laughter,

in my son’s banter,

in the warmth of the arms that hold me tight.


I am here,

not just for me,

but for the 40% 
who will one day meet you in the dark.
I am here.

On borrowed time, yes,

but with a voice that will not be silenced.

I will shout my story.

I will advocate for patients like me
for the care we deserve.