In her Pink

She sits in the dark, half-naked with her eyes closed, because sometimes you have to shut the world out to stay in it.

Not for you to look at. For her to remember. Her nakedness is all the nights she checked her body in the mirror, searching. All the mornings she dressed around a wound. One breast gone. The other side, a line of stitches. A zipper where her girlhood used to be.

She is not broken. From her head she grew horns. Big, branching. Because when they took her breast, she grew herself a crown instead. It hurt to grow them. It still does, because she needs strength to fight and at the same time to carry her old self to accept what's on the ground

She wears only pink. A headband. Underwear. The world gave her a pink ribbon and called it support. She took the colour back. Soldiers don't always wear camouflage.

On her chest, right where your heart would break, sits a crab. Cancer. It has claws. It has teeth. It wants to close its jaw. But she tied a blood-red rope around it. She is pulling. The rope runs up to her horns, then down to the stones she sits on. There are three stones

The first is light.

That’s the day the doctor said the word. The day the air left the room. The day she became a patient before she could finish being a person.

The second is darker.

That’s now. That’s chemo. That’s radiation. That’s throwing up and still showing up. The rope is tightest here. She is pulling hardest here.

The third is dark.  She doesn’t know what’s on that stone yet. None of us do. Remission? Return? Rest? She drags the crab toward it anyway. Because stopping means it wins.

And look, inside her horns, curled up small, is a girl. Knees to chest. Eyes closed too. That’s who she was before. The one who didn’t know bodies could betray you. She grew those horns to keep that girl safe. To give her somewhere soft to hide while the war happens below.  The background is black because when you’re in it, cancer feels like the only room there is.

This is not a painting about being brave. Brave is for stories. This is a painting about being tired, and still pulling. About being scared, and still sitting upright. About being half-gone, and still growing something new to carry what’s left.

“In Her Pink” is what happens after the fundraiser ends. After the march. After the ribbon comes off. This is the woman, alone with the crab, and the rope, and the stones, and the girl she refuses to let die.

Don’t tell her she’s an inspiration. Ask her if she’s eaten today. Then look at what it cost her to sit here like this, in her pink, and still be here at all.