Kerfuffle in Mind

You were told you were in complete
Remission, and six weeks later
You were told the cancer was back,

Bad, and raring to take over.
What’s unnerving in retrospect
Isn’t so much the way you learned—

Life in the air, life libre, life
Snatched away—but how little changed
In your daydreaming cavalcade.

You were hardly at all upset.
First, you considered cautiously
The hopeful, possible futures,

Then you told yourself you could think
About years and decades freely,
Which you tried. Then the curtain fell,

Or you were promised that it would,
Which kicked daydreaming to the curb.
What a miniature turmoil,

Permissible thoughts in your skull
Fizzing a bit while you waited
For further announcements from those

Same confident folks said you’d die,
Said you might in fact live, said you
Were likely to live a while, said

You were guaranteed soon to die.
A tiny kerfuffle in mind,
That hardly bothered you at all.