Fu$k Cancer

A poem for Dr. Brandi Mbolu, PT, DPT, NCS, a soul sister.

You came out of nowhere.

Seemingly.

Maybe you sent warning signs,

but we were busy laughing at bad hospital food and whispering sarcasm in sterile halls.

You crept in quiet, but you didn’t know

you were walking into a room with two fools who find light in IV bags and crack jokes between vitals.

Brandi met you with dry humor—

sharp as the sting of your name, but warmer.

Wittier.

She laughed in your face before you even had one.

We met at Adventist, where the air smelled too much like endings.

But she—

she made it feel like something in between:

a waiting room for miracles,

a chapel with punchlines,

a battlefield with blankets and grace.

You came for her body.

But you cannot take her brilliance.

You cannot steal the way she made me believe

that even fluorescent lights could look like sunrise, if the right person walked in.

She is not your story.

She is the rewrite.

The margin note.

The holy footnote in a tired book where someone wrote,

“She lived. Loudly. Even here.”

So take your scan results and your timelines.

We have a different clock.

One that ticks with every joke,

every breath,

every sistered silence

that says:

you are seen,

you are more

than what they found.

⸻