MY TWO SENTINELS
Chevonne kneels upon the earth and wonders who puts a stone in soup.
“Never play in the dirt,” her mother said.
“Boil stones with your soup,” her doctor says.
Chevonne shoves her trowel into the dirt. Crack. Metal strikes rock. She pauses as her body trembles, one of the many side effects of chemo. Chevonne never says the therapy part of the word because she’s found no therapy in it.
“Never be unhappy,” her mother said.
“Learn to share your grief,” her doctor says.
Chevonne rakes the dirt away with her brittle nails, then buries the trowel back into the earth. Screech. Metal grinds across rock. Her breathing is ragged.
“Never be less than perfect,” her mother said.
“Cancer is a messy process,” her doctor says.
Cheveonne rests back on her heels. She’s ashamed to ask for help, she’s ashamed to explain the stones, the leaching of minerals into soup. Chevonne looks up and her eyes rest upon a large blossom. The colors shimmer like a hot summer sunrise. They remind Chevonne of early mornings when her mother pulled Chevonne onto the porch, where the two of them stood, side-by-side, watching the sky pale from black to pink to deepening yellows.
“Never take more than you give,” her mother said.
“Let others help you,” her doctor says.
Chevonne digs again and again, until a large stone rests in one hand. Then she rises upon wobbly legs and plucks a shimmering sunrise from the bush.
“You’ll be fine,” her mother said.
“You’re doing great,” her doctor says.
Chevonne stares at the two sentinels in her hands: her mother’s sunrise, her doctor’s stone. She is somewhere between them, between a cosmic sky and a hardened rock.
“You are like me,” Chevonne whispers to the sentinels, “leaching each day into life.”