One Year Later





He slides his fingertips

along the inside of her thighs.

Blood races below her skin

to meet his touch. He makes

a circle of kisses around her breast,

then a line of kisses along the straight scar

on the other side. She weeps.



She'd imagined this, him

turning away at the sight of it,

of her, the marriage thrown

off center-like her body-

with the grief and weight

of what was lost.



She was wrong. Now,

one year later,

all the markers are down,

and there is no imbalance,

only the absence of weight,

the celebration

of what wasn't lost.


- Erasmo Vasquez



My friend,Erasmo, was a cuban refugee as a young boy and still those rythmns move though his sensual poetry like music. I think Erasmo undertands how time punctuates more than it heals. I look at my breasts. One now, much smaller than the other and still blue from the radioactive isotobes used for the lymph mapping. My housekeeper, Carmen, shakes her head and says in Spanish "chi-chis azules". We laugh. I can't speak much Spanish. She can't speak much English. Yet we are women; we speak the same language.

I dont know who will kiss the straight scar that runs like a gash in the mountain, underneath, from one side of my breast to the other. But I do believe that one year
from now, more will be gained than lost.

Thank you, Erasmo