Radiation

What radiates?
 - my heart at the beginning of the day,
or in the middle of a story,
or when you sing me a song.
- the machine gun showering bullets in an ever widening arc as the soldier turns in circles,
in fear.
- the giant machine I sit underneath to kill the cancer in my breast.
- the heat from the furnace in my room,
or from your body if I sit close,
but just out of reach.

O Soldier, can you hear?
My heart beats to the songs you sing to me.
Or does the gunfire drown it out?
The bullets you shoot
- of love,
then indifference
- confuse my head,
confuse my heart.
You're like the cancer
- growing,
uncontrollable,
an invasion spreading,
intruding,
destroying.

Can you feel the heat radiating from my body?
Is it from my heart,
or is it from my radiation?
It feels like a sunburn.
Have I lost the elasticity in my skin?