She breathes butterflies.
Her heart beats, burns
Bitter taste on the tip of her tongue
Can a candle burn without oxygen?

Medical talk.
Her mother buries herself in the language of the doctors
Attack of the acronyms
The alphabet had never seemed so mean.
The words become second nature.
Abnormal
Malignant
Radiation
A kernel of hope holds her hand
Countless conversations with the medics
The words come carefully from his mouth —
“It could be cancer.”

Brother,
8,
Denial.
Cancer is not an option.
Cancer happened in commercials
with lights racing through neuronal pathways
Not to his sister.

He’s pretty sure he’s too young for this.
That people his age aren’t supposed
to see their parents cry
To see their sister without hair
A million tubes coursing through her veins —
He’d never liked blood
But he kept his eyes open for her.

He developed insomnia
Because maybe the ceiling held answers
He did not want
Maybe if he watched the window long enough
She would come
And the stars would laugh for them.

Night in the summer
Crickets serenade with static
He is watching the shadows of the leaves again,
And they bring him a gift today —
Unfurl their green fingers and leave a butterfly on his windowsill.
They watch each other.
For the first time in seven months,
His face curls into a smile,
Something swells in his chest,
And he goes to sleep.

Morning —
Misdiagnosis.
It isn’t cancer.
She’s going to live.
A benign tumor pushes against her brain
But that can be shrunken into nonexistence —
She’s going to live.

Today.
Still bald
Still cross-eyed
Two years of chemotherapy
And every day, the tumor grows smaller
And her laughter fills the house,
And she breathes butterflies.