Breast Cancer Reflections 3

my left breast mastectomy

a series of X-ray photos were first taken

at a fairly walking pace

and I read about Wilhelm Konrad Röntgen

engrossed in his experiment and I saw a photo

of his wife, Anna Bertha’s hand skeleton, with 

her weird rings visible 

on her slender fingerbone 

becoming tender in the music

diagnostic X-rays of my insides were clean

but my left breast had to be amputated

at a slow dragging pace I could finally sink 

into anaesthesia, with again the assurance 

of an excellent prognosis

just a cut under my left breast

a second one above my nipple

the skin being lifted

the breast tissue with the tumour removed

then the cuts closed, one scar left

with a lovely result

— asymmetry stands out aesthetically in art —

and in me were no regrets 

about a lost breast

slightly reserved and sensitively thoughtful

I will handle my fragile feelings quietly

listening to Mahler's first symphony

transparent in the division of the orchestration

in the songs of songbirds

I hear seasonal modulation

then here then there by the lake

on branches next to a mountain hut

the brilliant composer composed music

with gold in the mouth 

of the bright early morning

a clarinet cuckoos to an English horn

silver flutes

and a shining trumpet

a sparkle of timpani melts snow from the highest peak

and cellos ripplingly convey heart-warming water lines

in the glassy crystal 

of the early spring air

a contrabassoon who just wanted to go through life happily

with scared lips around a double reed

in fine tongue articulation

on pages full of notes, she reads 

every interpretation in German

and relives it in the sound texture of her uncertain pain

deep in the music manuscript's orchestral 

layer upon layer

diminuendo

becoming softer

now very soft

sexually in ice fog

I long ago

disappeared

🦋

© Annora Eksteen, 2004