From The Inside

A Poem from Your Cells on World Cancer Day

Today is World Cancer Day. I wanted to write something for those who are fighting, those who have fought, and those who love someone in the battle.

We speak so often about the body as a battleground. But I wanted to try something different. To let the body speak for itself. To imagine what your cells might say to you if they could.

This is for anyone who has ever felt alone in their own skin.

You are not.

Before you were a name,
we were already rehearsing your defense.
Building walls. Training soldiers.
Memorizing the difference between
what belongs and what pretends to.

We have fought battles you never knew.
In the dark of 3 a.m.,
in the silence between heartbeats,
wars won so quietly
you woke up thinking nothing happened.

And now this.
This one we couldn't catch.
This one that slipped past the guards
wearing our own face.

Then came the medicine.
We knew what it meant
when the poison entered the bloodstream.
We did not run.
We understood the math.
To save the whole,
some of us must fall.

Your hair cells went first.
They did not scream.
They whispered on their way out.
Tell her it grows back.
Tell her we will return.

Your gut lining followed,
apologizing for the nausea,
for the meals that wouldn't stay,
murmuring through the wreckage.
We are rebuilding
even as we burn.

Your bone marrow worked double shifts,
exhausted,
irradiated,
still clocking in,
still manufacturing hope
in the shape of white blood cells.

We watched you cry in the bathroom.
We felt the tremor in your hands.
We held our breath through every scan,
every needle,
every waiting room silence.

We did not always know the outcome.
We showed up anyway.

You thought you were enduring it alone.
You were not.
Every cell that died, died saying your name.
Every cell that lived, lived to say it again.

But listen.
We are not done.

We are still here,
still reading the old instructions,
still sending reinforcements,
still believing in the country we built for you.

Some countries fall.
This one is still standing.

You think you are alone in this?
You have more allies than stars
moving beneath your skin,
who never learned the word surrender.

So when you are tired,
rest on us.
When you are afraid,
feel us. Still humming,
still repairing,
still choosing you
with every single breath.

You are not fighting alone.
You never were.

-Your Cells