"I Am Not Afraid"

A friend of mine with bone sarcomas (cancer) passed when I was 16/17. I wrote a poem she requested and gave it to her before it happened. I miss you Emily.

"I Am Not Afraid" 

This may break my bones, 

but words will never hurt me.

This is not sticks and stones. 

I can stand being short, 

and I stand taller than them for sure. 

Their words don't dock here, wrong port. 

Tell them maybe if they cut my hair, I'll be balder, cancer. 

Tell them, maybe if they pull my leg often I might get a little taller, ladder. 

That's what I'll be climbing, they can't grow higher. 

But honestly, I'm tired of the games.

I'm tired of the names, 

The shame I have gained from this lame disease that came,

 

in the dark of many nights. 

All my ambitions to climb new heights, 

are now, out of my sight. 

This is not fame. 

But you cannot tame the elegant beast,

the lady that lies inside this now frail frame. 

Make fun of my bald head, but I am beautiful.

Weak joints, like tissue, but I am strong, 

but strength can't help me fight this wrong. 

It builds the rarest of resolves, 

some beauty I find for what I can't see, 

the beauty I find for when I can't breathe. 

Something that with this disease that people don't have,

could never really understand, 

that I "understand" 

What it means to be truly scared,

what it means to know that you're not alone in the end, 

what it means to part the seams and scream in a whisper "I can't pretend." 

I still have love.

I still have my wits. 

Damn, I still have emotional fits.

 

I can sit hear reading this and be sure, 

that without a doubt, you'd give me endless aid. 

Without a doubt, my place for yours, you'd trade, 

and without a doubt, an owner of "shade" 

I am not afraid. 

-Al Mahiyan