Rumble

Cancer.

A simple word.

A little word.

And still…

I can feel the ground rumbling underfoot. The room is a vacuum and all of the air has been sucked out. Voices drone, but all I hear is roaring. My feet shuffle on the slick tile, and then I’m grasping her to my chest: my little daughter with the ink black curls. I don’t know how I got here, across the room from that evil word. I bury my face in her hair, breath in the fever sweat and oil and dirt. How long until I’m pulling dark strands off of her pillow? Or will she die before the hair can fall out? I’m spiraling now, sinking lower into my panic, breathing deeper gulps of the smell of her detangler, tears pelting her head like a summer rain.

I have to stop. I have to stop. I need to control myself. For her.

I suck in one last indulgent breath, and then a small hand is clasping my cheeks, dark brown eyes boring into mine with an intelligence that betrays an old soul, wearied by the months long struggle with her mystery illness… her…cancer.

She pats my cheek. I pat hers. Our eyes lock in the embrace of words unspoken. She knows. Her eyes have told me the truth. She knows. A tiny smile touches her rosebud lips, and her voice is a whisper of spring rain, “It’s okay, mama.”

Lumbering steps approach from the other side of the room, and large arms encircle us. Her smile grows as she reaches up to pat daddy’s cheek, too. I shrink in, pulling their love around me. We are safe here, in this cocoon of family. We are safe. And the world can crumble. And our hair can fall out. And the doctors can say that evil word. But I am safe in the arms of my family.

For now.