The Cancer Journals

Are you willing to use the power that you have in the service of what you say you believe?

There are women who, to me, are also that river—runnin alongside my life, pullin me in. Audre Lorde has been, and is, one of these women, flowin through my life a mile wide and a continent long.

There’s a word for loving something we’ve never touched: hope.

There are women who, to me, are also that river—runnin alongside my life, pullin me in. Audre Lorde has been, and is, one of these women, flowin through my life a mile wide and a continent long.

There’s a word for loving something we’ve never touched: hope.

To be Black, Mother, Lesbian, Poet, Warrior was her art. In doing so, she gave me history for my nourishment and the thrill of the many new ways of being I might choose. Her writing will keep winking at me through the crowd of faces.

In the poem “Now That I Am Forever with Child” (1963, in Undersong), Audre writes about the birth of her daughter. The final lines are: “I can only distinguish/ one thread within running hours/ you flowing through selves/ toward You.” In those words she claimed me, too, as her child and insisted at the same time that I make my own way. She embraced me and pushed me out of the nest.

“Poetry is not a luxury,” she wrote; and she meant it for all of us.

She was a gift to the universe. Because of her life and her death, I intend to learn how to be a gift to myself. And hopefully to others who are ready to lay the burden of silence down.

At times, I miss my right breast, the actuality of it, its presence, with a great and poignant sense of loss. But in the same way, and just as infrequently, as I sometimes miss being 32, at the same time knowing that I have gained from the very loss I mourn.

Right after surgery I had a sense that I would never be able to bear missing that great well of sexual pleasure that I connected with my right breast. That sense has completely passed away, as I have come to realize that that well of feeling was within me. I alone own my feelings. I can never lose that feeling because I own it, because it comes out of myself. I can attach it anywhere I want to, because my feelings are a part of me, my sorrow and my joy.

At times, I miss my right breast, the actuality of it, its presence, with a great and poignant sense of loss. But in the same way, and just as infrequently, as I sometimes miss being 32, at the same time knowing that I have gained from the very loss I mourn.

Right after surgery I had a sense that I would never be able to bear missing that great well of sexual pleasure that I connected with my right breast. That sense has completely passed away, as I have come to realize that that well of feeling was within me. I alone own my feelings. I can never lose that feeling because I own it, because it comes out of myself. I can attach it anywhere I want to, because my feelings are a part of me, my sorrow and my joy.

And I don’t think this is all a dream at all, and no, I would not give up love.