SURVIVORSHIP

Much peace. For today, the National Poetry Writing Month prompt is:

In his poem, “Goodbye,” Geoffrey Brock describes grief in three short stanzas, the second of which is entirely made up of a rhetorical dialogue. Today, write your own meditation on grief. Try using Brock’s form as the “container” for your poem: a few short stanzas, with a middle section in which a question is repeated with different answers given.

Here is my poem:

SURVIVORSHIP

By Farah Lawal Harris, 2026

My former body

before tumor robbed me

was a welcome comfort

like Kleenex when you’re sobbing.

Where did they go?

In a bucket, I think.

Where did they go?

Who even knows? I think

a lab to be studied like cells

of many who came before me.

I feel phantom nips

when cold wind blows.

I look down and see silicone.

Is it sane to weep even though

I survived? The malignancy is gone.