Forevermore

I'm frozen as I struggle with a bitter intensity

to search my soul for the words I need so immensely

It confuses me they're not flowing free with no reservation
With all that came with cancer and it's horrific infiltration
Into my life, body, spirit, mind and world as I knew it
Never to be the same again- tell me, where now does it all fit?

Shown to me throughout this horrific infiltration into my life
Was love, kindness, hope, good, bad, fear and scars from the surgical knife
Scars on my body, scars in my soul are there forevermore
Some fill me with tenacity and some tear me to the core

However, I stand here today with such hope of my new clean slate
And I am aware that only at my hands will all the "scars" abate
I work so hard to sift through all that I endured
To find myself crippled with "what if one day I am no longer cured?"

Only those who heard the words, "you have cancer" could ever understand
How this feels and the strength it forces you to command
From deep down within every ounce of your being
To places that are too deep to penetrate that believing,
"Never again, not me...it's already happened before"
Why not again? What's to say I won't get cancer once more?

My body failed me and the connection to it is lost
Not forever I sincerely pray- I have more life to live-i want another toss
To be truly happy with all the blessings and pain life can offer
And not allow this cancer to change and alter
the personality, strength and endurance that got me where I am today
I know now I have the ability to always find my way
Back to the truth I know as pure love and a life with joy
And no longer allow cancer to tear it apart and destroy.

I need to try and put the "what ifs" in a place far, far away
All the while knowing it's a reality I am fully aware of every day
How do I find the happy medium of the what's ifs and a plausible reality
Knowing I was already forced to face my mortality

I want to feel free to have a pain and not be riddled with fear
That cancer has come back with a vengeance and I now have one year...

How do I welcome another into this world and bring him this possibility
Make him face something so horrific that is not his responsibility?
To watch me suffer as I've done so in the past
What would I do if his strength couldn't last?

I begin to shut down now, no longer able to search inside
I think I've faced enough tonight as I move to take it all in stride

Assume the innocence of a pain free life is gone forevermore
I can still be happy, I can make it all that I could have ever asked for.

One step at a time, each day do the best to remember
Life is filled with joy and sorrow and to feel it and truly live- I can never surrender.