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You stand beside them,
hand on shoulder,
voice softer than usual,
as if the word itself might shatter something.

Cancer.

You see it in their eyes,
the weight of it,
the quiet arithmetic of time,
the questions no one quite asks out loud.

You go home carrying them with you,
thinking of hospital corridors,
of long nights,
of the slow grind of fear.

And then there’s you.

Tablets with breakfast.
Appointments in neat little boxes on a calendar.
Radiotherapy slots that feel more like errands than battles.
In, out, carry on.

No drama.
No soundtrack.
No sense that anything fundamental has shifted.

You sit in waiting rooms
full of faces that seem to understand something you don’t.
Gaunt, tired, eyes that have already crossed a line
you’re not sure you’ve even reached.

And you think, quietly,
almost guiltily…

That’s cancer.

But this?
This is just treatment.

Two truths,
living side by side,
never quite touching.

One you recognise in others.
One you refuse to see in yourself.

Until, perhaps,
one day,
they stop being strangers to each other.