Cancer.
Not the star sign,
but the disease that eats you from the inside.
Like a monster that keeps taking, always wanting more.

Cancer.
Not the relentless overgrowth of cells,
but the type of torture that causes your eyes to swell.
Bearing the pain of the monster eating you alive.

Cancer.
Not the “keep fighting” lines they print on pink ribbon,
but fighting the long and hard war of re-emerging illness.
Wishing that your body didn’t feel the pressure from the constant battle within.

Cancer.
Not the “I know I will die one day” type of mindset,
but the “I know I will die one day and maybe I want to” type of thinking.
No monster wants to eat a lifeless, decaying body.

Cancer.
Not the type of “curable” illness,
but the type you learn to live with.

No, I don’t have cancer.
I’m not a child subject to learning that living comes with the side-effect of dying.

What I do know of is a similar case, yet quite the opposite, with not so big of a name.
Depression – a form of cancer where you embody the side-effect of living.