before they took you into the operating theatre
you lay there on the bed
and said to your closest girl-friend
“If I wake up to find
my two treasures are gone
that’ll mean I’ve got cancer”
as you spoke you made a gesture with both hands
across your chest

you never breathed a word of this
to me – your husband
you were aware that if anything needed signing
I’d be the one to sign it
do you trust me with every decision
I have to make?
including the decision
to cut off your beautiful breasts?

I suddenly felt
I would never make it through the spring
I feared the worst
I feared the Old Man in the Sky would turn against me
already countless times in my mind
I had bowed down before Him
and asked Him to take every thing I had
just as long as He spared my wife’s breasts

I stood outside the operating theatre
waiting sentence
seconds passed like years
an illiterate peasant
grabbed me
and asked me to sign a form for him
but I refused him in no uncertain terms

my big peasant brother
suddenly remembered
that he knew how to write his own name
and so the problem was solved
and his wife became
a woman without breasts

actually, darling
before you went in for your pre-op examination
yesterday afternoon
I happened to see
two women who’d had their breasts removed
through the door of the clinic
left open by mistake
a nurse was changing their bandages
to me, they still looked beautiful
because I had already prepared myself
for the worst