Litany

One of my best friends was just diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She's 32 and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl in October.

She doesn't eat meat. She doesn't drink, doesn't smoke. She doesn't own a cell phone. She doesn't scrub her bathtub without wearing gloves or spray Shout stain-removal into her clothes without removing them first. She's never taken Accutane or Zoloft. She's never lived in Brooklyn four blocks from a shiny generator that hums at night. She doesn't make photocopies with the machine cover up. She hasn't poked through an Olie sticker and held her sheeny finger up for a fourth grade boy to admire. She doesn't put plastic in the microwave (she doesn't own a microwave). She doesn't spray chemical drying agent on her nails. She hasn't chewed through a Glowstick at Lilith Fair. She's never digested a Milk Bone. She's never accepted fried Yojoa impaled on a pole and held up to a bus window in Tegucigalpa. She's never woken up drunk next to a Big Apple Circus clown. Never run her tongue along the spot where a cheap mall ring tarnished her skin.

See, I can't figure out why she's the one with the cancer.

I've been having nightmares. The most recent: Robert Young, the father on Father Knows Best, as my sous-chef. He wore golf gloves and gesticulated with a whisk. A goth pregnant Padma Lakshmi was there. She had wings. We were making an angel food cake. How is this a nightmare? Why couldn't I stop crying?

I have inappropriate thoughts. That "carcinogen" sounds like a sweet roll sold at Cinnabon. That a twin sympathy cancer is growing in me too, a celery root, a gnarled heart, a way for us to be physically closer when she is over 4000 miles away and on an island. This girl I have known since I was fourteen.

Today: I started a Tumblr blog to photograph my cat. I upped the wattage in our bedroom floor lamp. I bought new dishwashing liquid, the brand that purports to save seals from oil spills. I read part of a depressing novel by Joyce Carol Oates who additionally depresses me by being prolific. I fantasized about opening a 24 hour diner that specializes in punny literary dishes: Joyce Carol Oatmeal, Tony Toast, David Eggers and Hash. I went to a friend's art instillation. I held Dan's hand in the snow. I thought about how much I love Dan. I ate goat cheese pinwheels.

In Tuesday night's nightmare, Robert Pattinson is bleeding from the neck. He begs me to drink from his two delicate puncture wounds, leans in close and shakes my shoulders in a rough but not callous way. I recognize this as sexual tension. He whispers into my mouth: "I am the key to Lou Gehrig's Disease." I wake up on the living room couch, sweating. I've knocked the cat brush off the sill.

I'm angry that my friend has cancer. I'm angry that I dreamed about Twilight and not Buffy, which is really to say I'm angry that my friend has cancer.

I try to decide if Tiger Woods was drunk or beaten or just unlucky. I reread Bertrand Russell's essay "Why I'm Not a Christian" when I'm expected to be praying. After reading it, I try again to pray. I check the bikram yoga schedule online. I write down the day's times even though I know I won't go. I try to call my friend even though I know she's having a hysterectomy. There's no recorded voice so I hang up. I decide to cook something with celery root. I go out and buy celery root. While holding the celery root, I think to myself "This is how cancer looks. I should write about her cancer." I'm disgusted with myself. When I get home, I open two pages on my browser. One is AllRecipes and one is WebMD. I search for "celery root soup" in AllRecipes and "ovarian cancer symptoms" in WebMD. I immediately close WebMD.

I put on Sondheim's Into the Woods. Last Christmas, she didn't have a baby or a cancer. I think about chemo. I think about "prayer" rhyming with "hair." I don't write poems anymore. I think about the one-letter difference between "prayer" and "player." I dated a player once -- he never answered his phone when I called but would call back later, hours later, days later. "I missed your call," he'd say. I'd be in my room. I'd be listening to Dark Side of the Moon on LP, my body jumpy with the anticipation of his calling, and I'd be grateful when he did, finally, that jocular baritone, but it wasn't the same. He never picked up when I called. I think about God.

So now it's Thursday night. Tomorrow we're hosting diner for a 3 year old and her mom. We can't watch Fox and the Hound because it's too scary. I agree. I don't want to dream of Mickey Rooney's disembodied voice, of bear traps. I feel my belly under my robe. I re-read my own disembodied voice.