trying to remember how it ends
Emilie Collyer
they slit the breast and insert a metal coil
so the future can always find the past
in the play the character dreams
of lying under an oak tree
there was a suspicious mass that turned out
not so suspicious but they wanted to mark the spot
at the hospital they tell her not to exercise
for three days and no baths or swimming
nothing that might make the bleeding start again
in the foyer at interval the audience murmurs
about their dull lives and how the resort in Nusa Dua
has its own private beach
the site aches in a low-level way like a reminder
of all the poor beleaguered breast has been through
in the play they all speak quickly and definitively
like people from the olden days
the reviewer calls it a once in a decade five-star work
why does it make her so angry that people like the play
is it because it is not a good play it is an okay play
and the superlatives distract from actual engagement with the play
she leaves the dressing on for a week and then peels it away
the bruising is yellow like autumn leaf stain
she puts the dressing in the bin and sees how she is not a person
but an amalgam of all the people she has known
the main thrust of the play is about a non-conforming woman
who has a consuming love for one man
there is not a more conforming story in all of the stories
she recalls how the radiographers during her earlier treatments
were mostly young men
looking at her breasts day after day laid out flat
with tiny tattoos on her chest guiding the young men
as to where to fire the radiation
she fought hard against feeling passive and objectified
she took photos of the breast the tattoos the bruises all of it
she recalls the day she saw the black plastic covered body
on the drive to the hospital
it was the same day she learned that Olivia Newton-John
had died
the day she learned she had cancer she remembered
how she had adored Olivia as a kid how she had sung along
to Hopelessly Devoted to You and Physical in her Dad’s study
wearing the big headphones
some days strange things hurt like the vein in her wrist
where they always try to draw blood
today there were two women in day oncology with a tiny baby
and a sandwich
does the baby have cancer she wondered
or one of the women and is one of them the baby’s mother
she doesn’t remember how the plays ends
even while applauding the effort she starts to forget
outside the theatre after the show it is raining
that February rain a relief on their hot February skin
EMILIE COLLYER lives on unceded Wurundjeri Country in Australia where she writes across forms. Her poetry book Do you have anything less domestic? (Vagabond Press 2022) won the inaugural Five Islands Press Prize. Emilie recently completed a PhD at RMIT, where she is now an Adjunct Industry Fellow.
