“So, You’re All Good Now?”

Winner of the 2024 49th Parallel Award (Poetry)

       Touch the soft space 
       beneath my clavicle from the port they removed.

       Or the radiation tattoos. Blurred ink
       stains on favorite linens. 

       Here the holes burrowed
       into my liver because I let them

       take the healthy 
       breast along with the diseased, but

       what else was I supposed to do
       with all that fear? 

       Last month, my friend died. The third
       in as many years. I didn’t know 

       what to write to her wife and kids,
       so I didn’t. Sometimes silence

       is a storm, too. 

Still, there is at least

       one glowing, golden plum 
       every summer on the tree in the garden,

       swollen with sticky sweet
       that pours over my lips, 

       drips

       onto my chest. 
 

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Kira Hodgson is a poet and writer living in Portland, Oregon with her cat and her best friend. She loves the smell of jasmine, walks at night, and cloudy days on the coast. Kira writes about her experience with cancer and navigating life in the aftermath of illness. Her work has appeared in Wildfire and Coming to Terms: A BAYS Anthology. She is currently writing her first memoir.