that if cancer had to come, it came
now,
after the harrowing months of emptying her parents’ home,
after masks and vaccines were easy to get, and hospitals
__________nearly back to normal,
after winter’s icy threats,
after her brother’s cancer
had shown her
__________how much worse
____________________her own could be.

Jennifer L. Freed ‘s book, When Light Shifts, A Memoir in Poems, which explores the aftermath of her mother’s cerebral hemorrhage, was a 2022 Finalist for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize. See more on her website: jfreed.weebly.com