The oncologist shows us the tumors on the screen:
two fuzzy white circles stacked like a headless
snowman. He explains how he knew exactly
where to look: cancer cells from the testes always travel
back up the same path the testes descended
before birth. This detail feels so perfect, so neatly ordered,
that if this were a textbook and not my loved one’s body,
if this were not the news we dreaded, the starting line
for chemo, I could marvel at the miracle of this fact.
Katie Manning is the founding editor-in-chief of Whale Road Review and a professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. Her book Tasty Other won the 2016 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, and her fifth chapbook, 28,065 Nights, is newly available from River Glass Books. katiemanningpoet.com, Twitter: @iamkatmann, Instagram: @katiemanningpoet, Facebook: facebook.com/katiemanningpoet.