Breast Cancer Reflections 1

a mammogram and a sonogram

I look back and write down here

that from the sky up high

to the cool breezes that sometimes play

through blowing grass

that nature took no notice

of my reasonably good prognosis

I’ve also known for a long time now

that I was lucky

I could see our children grow up

but I still felt as if my value had decreased a little

while children would continue to play 

in a warm brown lagoon, with their feet treading water

in the silty soft summer sand of Glenmore Strand

.

just now, when I closed my eyes for a while

I saw fireflies circling above wet moss

behind thin cascades of a waterfall

where we walked for days

singing about mountains and singing about valleys

always in Ōṃ and always part of the universe

there, in the highlands of KwaZulu-Natal

.

I should have thought about that

when a radiographer was busy 

with a screening mammogram

after that, I waited a long time that day

when something within me began to die

in my never sheet white, just light caramel, I guess

easily offended eggshell, even though I, funnily enough

physically have a strong and healthy skin

.

a radiologist then came

to obtain an image by ultrasound

to produce an ultrasound imaging to diagnose

this disease

then another long wait in November 2003

when our children were playing at break time

at Hyde Park High, at Randburg Primary

and also at a Preschool’s Kindergarten class

that Monday, when I was still 42

that Monday with the sonogram machine

when sounds inhumanly high and shrill

started to trill into my insides

a bad feeling flowed through my mind

in my essence maybe a realisation

how painful in my future

my life would bleed

but green bunches of bananas

will still hang in KwaZulu-Natal

at Glenmore Strand

🦋

© Annora Eksteen, 2025