Teva Harrison, a Canadian author and poet, was only 37 years old when she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. She published In-Between Days in 2016, an illustrated nonfiction memoir about coping through her treatment and diagnosis, which received numerous accolades and nominations. In her posthumously published poetry book, Not One of These Poems Is About You, Harrison’s poems serve as both a farewell and an invitation to embrace the uncertainty as she faces the end of her life.
Throughout the pages, Harrison sketched flowers into the corners and dotted stars across the page. An accomplished artist whose work has been featured in the Winnipeg Art Gallery, every illustration depicts something alive, in motion, but that also carries the illusion of wilting — or in the case of stars, drifting away. Together, the illustrations and poems generate a sense of urgency, that everything on the page is moving, until you reach the end of the book and everything is blank.
“My body holds nothing back. / I’m biting my tongue because this is what I do when you tell me how / nobody would guess that I’m dying. / As if the guessing is what matters, not the dying.”
In her poem, “The Things I Do to Keep Cancer on the Down-Low,” Harrison addresses the ineffectual praise that comes from hiding her illness and the bleakness facing her when no amount of cosmetic modification or wardrobe illusions can disguise the disease killing her on the inside. It’s a rather polite confrontation to those who assumed her healthy-passing appearance could suggest she might be getting better — or even survive. She lists the way her body privately deteriorates, between the chemo, the tumours, and the tedious upkeep demanded of her between dying and being a woman in her forties.
“‘You look great!’ / As though the outer manifestation, the hair loss and sallow skin / were the real sickness, and not the spreading, blooming decay under my skin.” Harrison’s longing to preserve her femininity is both a distraction and an exhausting ordeal.
It’s easy to praise Harrison for her candor with cancer and the forward acceptance of her inevitable demise, but what choice does she have beyond coping? Beyond transparency? Her words do not blanket the devastating effects of her disease, nor does the dreamy quality of her prose uproot the reader far from her reality of cancer, dying, the fear of disappearing, and the inevitable sorrow of leaving her husband behind. Harrison’s love for her partner seeps across pages, merging with her fear of being replaced, her eagerness to exist for him beyond the grave, and the understandable disdain she feels toward a future partner who may one day replace her.
“I will curl myself inside your heart, and try / my hardest to leave you the best of me.”
Harrison passed away in April 2019, five years after her initial diagnosis. Ultimately, she offers us insight into her harrowing journey and the incredible peace she’s come to terms with, the past she had to bury in order to face her future, and even considerations for those in our lives who might be facing terminal illness.
