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The Black Kimono

by Blaise Allen

lies across her bed,
arms opened out
anhinga wings spread
across the sky.
She finished radiation
remains unflappable.
Her right breast raw,
blistered, and burnt,
she does not complain,
refuses to discuss it.
She embodies the fine silk,
as new skin, lets it slide over
her pale body as easily as 
moonlight slips over riverbeds
at night. In her favorite dream,
she rises into a swelling 
wake of stars.

The Black Kimono originally appeared in The Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Volume VI, 2009. Blaise Allen, Ph.D. is an award winning poet and photojournalist. At the time she wrote this, her mother had completed her last course of radiation for breast cancer which had created a burn that took lots of TLC to heal.