Red Shoes

Cancer is so peaceful,
its silent agony eating away at jaws and lungs alike.
There is the first breath of arsenic smoke,
the rush of blood to the head
as the cigarette swims through one's legs.

Then there is the quiet
decay of marigold teeth, shiny with spit,
like polished nails.
Hair that once blossomed red and brunette
will fade to sickly gray,
then to nothing.
Absolutely nothing: the baby's baldness all over again.

As the cancer children grow backwards,
the scream of disease echoing through the halls,
I dream of red shoes.

Red shoes,
glittery like Dorothy's, gleaming
in the Nepali sun.
I will spin and spin in red shoes,
adorned in hand-carved diamonds and tanzanite crystals.
The first breath of a breaking dawn
will streak magenta through the sky.
I will be wearing my precious shoes.

In the heat of a tropic summer, I
will wear my red shoes and drift naked across
the beach, baking in the sun.
In the bitter frost of arctic winter, I
will wear my red shoes and sleep
with the snow, buried, lost in the frost.

In the early blossoming of pastel spring,
I will wear my red shoes
as I walk through the clouds, trot through fields
of clear blue,
up to heaven, away from the cancer
and the madness
and the night trauma of disease.

And I know
that God
will love my shoes.