Scattered by sickness,
my mind feels absent,
dispersed; sand across concrete.
The sight comes to me.
My father pouring oil,
and as I hold the funnel,
my reflection in the oil
pouring down a metal bowel.
My grandmother's hands,
my absent mother's voice
on Mother's Day, sunny.
A thousand Jewish faces gaunt,
drawn in ink, stretched,
lengthened by sorrow,
until they melt into mine,
reflected in oil
disappearing like a genie,
back into its bottle,
into a metal engine,
softness lost in hardness,
harshness, hotness,
the unforgiving brutality
of cancer, that pocks the face,
craters intestines with black humour.