CAT scans don’t have long whiskers
that tickle your face in the morning,
don’t wrap themselves around your legs
when you get home
like they can’t imagine a world
without you.

CAT scans don’t care
that your EpiPen needs to be
at the ready, just in case
your body decides the heat is too much,
the contrast dye doing its job.

CAT scans don’t know
if cancer is living inside you,
how many times you have been
tested or what the odds are
that pieces of you are undetected,
ignored.

CAT scans can see you
as you lay under your flowered comforter
at home,
before your feet touch hospital floors.
You take long breaths
but you never get enough
air back in.

The needle, the tube, the lights
the heat—still watching,
never blinking.
Not when the moon settles in
for the night
or when and you dare to dream
that this is so simple,
just another test.