The List of Things You Are Sick of Four Months Past Diagnosis by Ally Malinenko
1. Being the youngest person in every
waiting room and the way the nurses
and the other patients look at you with pity
and fear as if this disease were getting stronger
by growing earlier in your young flesh
and you are a reminder that their own children,
who they love,
will never be safe.
That none of us will
ever really be safe.
2. See #1
Ally Malinenko is the author of the poetry collection The Wanting Bone (Six Gallery Press) and the novel This Is Sarah (Bookfish Books). She lives in the part of Brooklyn the tour buses don't come to.
