November is the bustle of customers in a grocery shop,
the crisp crackle of leaves underfoot,
winter biting at a young girl’s hands
as she dips out of the hot-cold, rumbling
and quiet of her mother’s car,
a goodbye painting her lips as she
r e a d i e s herself for school.
November is the faint  thrum of murmurs,
excitement in the air as holidays loom,
crawling closer.
A sweet relief for the girl and the others;
as Thanksgiving brushes by, warm and bitter,
long but short.

November is when her father stops eating
and starts his endless sleeping,
sluggish,
    fatigued,
paling.
November is the acrid smell of antiseptics,
the shrill beeping of the hospital machines,
the solemn curve of the doctor’s lips,
her father small and frail in crisp, clean sheets,
eyes slammed shut,
voice rough when he speaks.
It is the start of something numbing and new,
where the girl first cries for days,
uncontrollable, but
then as time goes on,
not at all,
empty dishes still in their resting places,
chairs and silverware prone, untouched.

Thanksgiving is no longer a sweet,
appreciated break from the text-laden
screen of her iPad or the binders full
of loose, inked paper,
black, blue, red staining her fingers.
Instead it is a week of clenched jaws,
sore, swollen eyes,
dripping noses,
the loud blaring and beeping,
the bustle and hum of a nurse’s conversation,
the girl pretending to be asleep while actually awake as she hears words,
sympathetic and thick with pity
filling the small hospital room,

with things like “tumor”,
“cancer”
    “CATSCANS”
“stage IV”
that cloud and stuff themselves in her ears.

Her mother, in bitter November, eyes fluttering
shut with tears,
tired lines at the corner of her face,
hands knuckled as the chill from outside
creeps itself in,
trees with bare, skeletal branches
waiting outside,
the faint chatter of the television a low whine
in the crushing hospital room.

November is the month she falls behind,
sick with the flu,
leafs of paper clenched and cluttering her
hands,

motivation dying,

lots more crying,
frustration boiling in her veins.
A mantra of “why me?”
    “why us?”
The nightly drive to the harshly lit hospital,
nurses waving at the girl and her mother’s familiar faces.
The girl, tired,
managing a smile through her tears,
clutching the phone as she speaks to her sister,
whose voice is tinny but there.
Then, November falling to

    December

“six months”
    “terminal”
and the girl fades again,
clinging to a loose,
frayed
thread.