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<strong>Switchgrass</strong> <strong>Review</strong> • Vol. 6 45<br />
I think of mythical Amazonian women, strong and skilled. Living outside the<br />
patriarchy. Or the archeological team who excavated 2000-year-old graves to<br />
find Sarmatian women buried with their weapons.<br />
The patriarchy wants to give me a wig, but I want a crossbow. Where is my<br />
spear? Where is my sword?<br />
Even if a wig can help me, even if it helps me by making me feel more beautiful,<br />
even if feeling beautiful can raise my self-esteem, I must ask what my selfesteem,<br />
my self-image, is relying on? How many women had to Google How to<br />
look beautiful during chemo to make that a popular search?<br />
The chemo will take my hair. This will make me aerodynamic. I will swim<br />
without resistance. The chemo will take my eyebrows. My enemy will never<br />
read the pain on my face. The chemo will make me puffy. Maybe even gain<br />
weight. Let me take up space. Like confronting a bear in the woods, I will make<br />
myself large and make loud sounds to scare my cancer away. If the world wants<br />
me to be a warrior, let me look like one.<br />
Let me be ugly. Let me be as ugly as the necrotic cells eating my tit.
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