Beneath the Surface: A Poem About Living With Skin Cancer

A little over a year ago, I was diagnosed with melanoma in situ. The emergency phone call disrupted my day; I was meeting a friend at the museum to hang out. I wanted and desired normalcy after my new year started with some hitches.

At the museum, I told my friend about the phone call. He was concerned. But I still slapped on a smile and told him that all I wanted to do was forget about the dreaded doctor’s appointment. “Just make me laugh, please,” I said.

And he did.

Eventually, I had surgery to remove the spot. The friendship ended because we were much too close to our own unique chaos. But I still think about how he helped me wear joy like second skin that day.

And I’m forever grateful for that.

---

second skin

I’ve only desired for nothing but
a second canvas. An improved body.

Wearing holes instead of joy is
not as beautiful as it seems. Each freckled

darkness weighs ten tons.
Oh, how I loved you when you looked at

them, laughed at my ridiculous first skin,
and said, “I like them, your freckles. You have

so many.”

When we were not trapped in our
misery, oh, how we liked to entertain with

wit and tongue. But that misery licked our flesh
clean. It burned us into nothing. We had to grow

another skin. And then shed that. Grow another
freckle. Then shed that too.

My new skin, you do not know.
But if you were to see it—you would celebrate it.

And I would praise yours
like the heaven I knew it capable of.