It’s like a puddle on that CT scan

Something that started as ice and then spread out like a fan

It confirmed what the x-ray showed

Those lungs on the screen weren’t hollow

The old woman hung up the phone after she got the news

She lit a cigarette because she didn’t know what else to do

But she didn’t bother to go outside this time

She looked out, heard the windchime

She noticed how the photos in the house were stained yellow

She inhaled and despite the news, felt a little more mellow

Her daughter walked in, long and thin

Also puffing on a cigarette

The news was a blow she’d never forget

The daughter cried and trembled

At the dining room table they had once assembled

The mailman walked across the lawn, to the porch’s mailbox

He saw the women inside smoking and crying and hugging

He was flummoxed

What he didn’t know was that he’d just delivered a blow himself

A chest x-ray report – this time for the daughter

The one who sat holding her mother

They were like a melted snowman

Neither bothered to get up to check the mail

They smoked their cigarettes and became more and more frail

Till the house caught fire

And they both expired

The fireman who went in

Suffered severe smoke inhalation

The mailman went on, thinking about how he needed a vacation – from delivering bad news

The radiologists who read the report felt tired and short

Of diagnosing death

Of x-ray requests

Your actions are lymph nodes, your words reports

Puddles that turn to streams wherever you go

Maybe this poem’s dramatic

But the truth of it is: we are all metastatic