Monday Night's Dream

I was in a doctor’s office that I’ve never seen before in real life. The reception desk was on my right and I was wearing a striped dress. Dr. Rocco came out from the back and told me I had cancer again, this time in my left breast. I asked her how she knew and she pointed to my dress. As she said the words “I can see it,” I could suddenly see it too. In two places the stripes of the dress parted around pearly, colorless circles. The space between the circles and the stripes was filled up with a milky-looking slickness that tapered at both ends. These cancer-spots on my dress reminded me of eyes on a peacock tail feather. They reminded me of egg yolks so pale they matched the whites surrounding them. They reminded me of river-stones and oysters and moons.

We took the dress off, the receptionist, Dr. Rocco and I. It slipped off my body and we held it up to the light streaming in from the window on my left. We held it up high enough that it reached the curtain rod at the top. We hung it on the rod and suddenly it wasn’t a dress anymore, it was a curtain. We stood there looking at it as the cancer-egg-oyster-tails grew and shifted between the fat colored stripes.

I was sad, gazing at this indisputable evidence my cancer had returned. Then, suddenly, I had a hopeful thought. “Dr. Rocco,” I asked, “How can this be my cancer? It’s not even on my body, it’s on the curtain!” She shrugged and told me, “Cancer is strange. We don’t understand everything about it. This is yours alright.”