Aggressive

Don’t talk to me about options
or what it is to tolerate treatment.

When I say kill the cancer, I mean I want it dead.
Slash it, burn it, poison it without mercy

without stopping to clean up the hair from the floor
the red from the sheets. I don’t care

about the tumor’s grade and stage. Knock it down
to nothing the way people who see me coming do

turning from my limp and lashless gaze
blind to what it costs to stay among them.

Cheryl Snell

Cheryl Snell

Cheryl Snell has six collections of poetry and two novels. Her recent work can be found in VerseWrights, PANK, Ithaca Lit, and The Centrifugal Eye Anniversary Anthology. She lives outside DC with her