Today at school, I locked myself in the bathroom 

so I could cry where no one could see.

 

Things aren’t the same anymore and I don’t know 

how to communicate it.

 

I find myself unable to do the simplest things—

to comprehend, to remember, to articulate 

the things I could before.

 

This morning, I sat in silence and stretched and breathed in deeply, 

and I said three good things about myself.

 

But then I left my books on the table to cry alone in the bathroom and forgot 

about the good things

and felt like I was drowning

in the fog

in the tears

in this new confusion that makes me question 

who I am;

who I was.

 

Daily,

I give grace 

to the body that fought for me to live.

 

But here,

In the small space of this bathroom stall, 

I find room to mourn the parts of me that died

in a chair 

behind a curtain

on the third floor of a cancer hospital.