Marketing Death

One of the brochures on the Breast Cancer Awareness Month
table read, “Men Can Get Breast Cancer.” Inside it told you
that breast cancer is not just “a woman’s disease.” It showed
an old man fishing on a dock. The water was gray. No sun.
There was no pink anywhere in this brochure.

I heard a story about women with breast cancer waiting
for treatment who are given a care package with a teddy
bear, some paper, and a box of crayons. “Why the crayons?”
“In case you want to write down your thoughts.”

When disease takes us, it must choose between pink and blue.
You either pump one last hard breath out through tired lungs,
drop your pole and roll off the dock into the water where
your body floats gaunt and tragic halfway out to the rising
moon before it sinks to the bottom and the water ripples,

or

you sit reclined in a clean white bed surrounded by flowers.
You hold your small plump teddy bear just under your chin,
the simple beauty of your face no longer hidden by your hair,
your eyes sparkling with the long florescent lights... and you sleep.