Synkroniciti is honored to present “grace before meals” by Scottish poet and writer Kathy McVittie, one of our “Dreams” poetry contest finalists. The poem recounts a striking and surreal dream illustrating how our minds speak in code through our dreams. A woman, our narrator, is led out of a concert hall by a man who promises to “take care” of her. They exit not through the normal paths of the audience, but via backstage, thus identifying somehow with performers and performance. He leads on to a strange apartment with a single bare lightbulb over a table occupied by other guests. The dinner date grows increasingly bizarre, as our woman sings and the other guests remove their shirts and blouses. “Expectant, silently, they turned back to Me to look, but i had shrunk to me./ With what remained of pride i wondered how to bare my Wound with grace/ before their souls—and then awoke.” If we read closely, we can puzzle out that the narrator has undergone surgery for breast cancer and is concerned how others will react to her changed body and her story. Surgery, no matter how necessary, is, at a physical and subconscious level, a trauma, even if the mind understands it as helpful. In addition, people can be callous and sometimes the callousness feels institutional.
This is a richly beautiful poem with layers of meaning that can be explored over time. It is important for cancer survivors to know that survivor stigma and the fear of it are real in our society and that other people have encountered and persisted in the face of cruel and baffling scrutiny. If this is you, you are not alone, but it is normal to feel alone in this situation. One of the powers of poetry is connecting us to other people who have similar (and different) experiences to our own, so that we feel seen and heard, yet not exposed and exploited. The poet’s vulnerability stands in proxy for our vulnerability.
Read “grace before meals” in Synkroniciti’s “Dreams” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
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