He turns the laptop toward us, keys
up the CT-scan parade as though we’re eager
for this ride, black-and-white slices of your body

core advancing, retreating
through the tunnel of your abdomen.
We recognize the spine’s familiar knotted rope

swerving in and out, the organs’
morphing shapes, as we slide between
the lungs, plunge into plump flesh pastures where

cancer has returned to graze.
Here, a kidney emerges and retreats.
Its twin, absent—years ago teased away from

the tangled Spanish moss
of liposarcoma—abscinded, as they say,
cut out, discarded. The doctor pauses our dizzy

journey, there, there, he points,
and we strain to read it, twinkling faintly
like some distant star glowing to nova in the far

reaches of your personal galaxy,
the one revealing point of light, a thickening,
an induration. This thing we’re not trained to see,

don’t want to see, must see.
We lean forward in our patient chairs
as the oncologist runs the film-cells back, ahead,

and the invading body comes
alive, the white tiny blot shows itself
snugged up at your aorta, from where we thought

it had been banished. He freezes
this one shot on the telltale screen.
We hear watchful waiting, no treatment yet. But

we know we’re back on cancer’s
roller-coaster, strapped to our seats. Straining
to make out what lies beyond the next blind curve.