You can tell, with the bald, that the air
speaks to them differently, touches their heads
with exquisite expression.
In this quotation, the narrator—who is oddly fascinated with baldness—comments on the bald head of a cleaning lady he saw once. The narrator states that air “speaks” differently to those that are bald. It can be assumed that by this, the narrator means that bald people are perhaps more sensitive to their surroundings, including environmental factors, such as air and wind. In other words, the narrator suggests with this quote that bald individuals interact with their surroundings differently and perhaps experience things differently than those individuals who have hair.
Look down these days to see your feet
mistrust the pavement and your blood tests
turn the doctor’s expression grave.
In this autobiographical poem, the narrator—who is intended to represent author Jo Shapcott—discusses her harrowing experience with breast cancer. She describes the eerily sorrowful sensation of being in the doctor’s office and discovering that her cells have mutated into cancer. She explains how her “feet mistrust the pavement.” This likely refers to a symptomatic expression of the narrator’s cancer. This mistrust she describes likely refers to the shock of the cancer diagnosis and her body’s natural, chemical response to the mutated cells. It’s possible that her physical balance was also altered as a result of the cancer and that this lack of balance affected how she walked on the pavement. In short, this quotation describes the moments and days leading up to the narrator’s official diagnosis, where she could feel something was physically wrong with/in her body.
Too many of the best cells in my body
are itching, feeling jagged, turning raw
in this spring chill.
In this quotation, author Jo Shapcott references the cancerous cells in her body and how they’ve mutated to betray her body. The visuals in this quotation help to highlight the intuitive feeling the narrator had that something had gone wrong in her body. She claims to feel the cancer in her very cells—to feel their transformation in the spring air. In this way, this quotation showcases how the author’s cancer diagnoses fundamentally changed how she felt and thought about her body and the cells that comprised it. Her descriptive language captures how the narrator could literally feel the cancer and disease altering her cells.
Don’t trouble, though,
to head anywhere but the sky.
In this rather sobering concluding line, the narrator of this poem—presumably Shapcott herself—comments on the mortality of all of us and highlights that death is an inevitable phenomenon for us all. Before this quotation, the narrator had explained how we can attempt to fit as many experiences as we can into our short lives, but ultimately, we all head to the sky (read: die). In this way, this quotation almost captures the idea that you can’t take it with you. Given the contextual evidence that the narrator has recently been diagnosed with cancer, this final quotation is also very poignant in the face of a harrowing diagnosis. In some ways, this quote captures the sentiment that—when you’re faced with your own potential mortality—you realize that these accolades, objects, and sometimes experiences become irrelevant and extraneous. In the end, regardless of our varying experiences, we will all die and face our own mortality.
