January.

Cancer is not glamorous or sexy.
It’s not beautiful in that way.
It’s not even what it’s like in the sad movies.
It’s not romantic.
Someone is not brave for loving you while you have cancer.
It’s not brave, but it’s hard.
There is no intimacy
When you smell like a hospital
When your mouth tastes like metal and throw up
When your breast is an open wound
It’s messy and smelly and dirty and painful and gross
There is nothing sexy about it, they have to give you pamphlets
On loving yourself. On relationships and sex.
There will be doubt. There will be fights. There will be crying over a sink at midnight.
If someone can’t sop up your vomit without question or complaint
Then they do not deserve you
If someone can’t look at you with your tired, sunken eyes and your patchy skin and your gray teeth and your wisps of hair
If they can’t look at you and say you are still so beautiful
Then they do not deserve you
It is not brave but it is hard.
When you are in love with someone whose body is a civil war battlefield
If you love them you will love them through the sick and the blood
When the sink fills up with hair you will be there
When you have to get the check early during date night you will remain calm
You will hold them
And your heart will break but
You will not fall apart.
You will not fall apart
For them.
When they are weak
You will be strong
When they fall
You will pick them back up
For exactly half a second you will think about leaving them
Then you will scrub harder
You will kiss deeper
You will push that thought so far back into your brain that you will forget anywhere but the spot in which you lay next to them and your seat at the table and your hand in theirs
And it will not matter if they are tired
It will not matter if they can barely speak
It will not matter
Because you love them.