Spa Sisters
Beth Copeland
by Beth Copeland
When we arrive an aide offers heated blankets,
one for me and one for my sister Becky.
This week we have a room with a window.
Sunlight slants through venetian blinds as if
saying, I want to live. I sit in the chemo chair
and spread the warm blanket over my lap.
A smiling woman stops in the doorway
with a cart of snacks. I ask for ginger ale
and a Rice Krispies Treat wrapped in blue foil.
Becky chooses Nabs and a Diet Coke.
Nurse David hangs the first infusion on
the IV pole—saline solution. Becky jokes
with him, calling the chemo room a spa
because we’re treated so well—blankets,
beverages, snacks. David laughs and says,
You girls need to go to a better spa.
I’ve never been to a spa, but I’m enjoying
the friendly banter here, people in the rooms
next to mine, their conversations muffled by
privacy drapes. A beeper goes off and David
returns to exchange the empty saline bag for
a bag of Aloxi, a carbonated anti-nausea drug.
Last month a different nurse called it “champagne.”
I watch as the fluid flows through the clear tube
to the port below my collarbone and visualize it
moving through my veins like healing sunlight.
Becky goes out to get lunch and returns
with vegetable sushi. I trade my wasabi —
too hot!—for her pickled ginger. The nurses
smile at us eating with chopsticks,
those funny spa sisters! Who needs a spa?
I don’t need a foot massage, heated stones
on my spine, or a Kaolin mud mask
with cucumber slices upon my eyes.
I’m seated in a comfortable chair in a room
where I’m treated with kindness and care.
Beth Copeland is the author of I Ask the Mountain to Heal My Heart (Redhawk Publications, 2025); Shibori Blue: Thirty-six Views of The Peak (Redhawk Publications, 2024); Selfie with Cherry (Glass Lyre Press, 2022); Blue Honey, 2017 Dogfish Head Poetry Prize winner; Transcendental Telemarketer (BlazeVOX, 2012); and Traveling through Glass, 1999 Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Award winner. Beth is receiving treatment for stage IV inoperable gallbladder cancer and lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
