Please select the best answer for each question.

Question 1:

After your symptoms intensify, your primary care physician refers you to a gynecologist. Your husband accompanies you to the appointment.

While the gynecologist is examining you, he:

1. engages you in small talk to put you at ease.
   
   
2. tells your husband that his son is angling to enter the entertainment industry and quizzes your husband about his career.
   
   

Question 2:

The generosity you displayed by not kicking the gynecologist in the face during your exam will be repaid:

1. when he takes your panicky 7:00 a.m. call about your new cancer diagnosis with grace, answering your questions with warmth and sensitivity despite the early hour.
   
   
2. when he is snippy during your panicky phone call, then, after your hysterectomy, his practice besieges you with emails promoting vaginal rejuvenation.
   
   

legs 

and everything else 
wide open 

only your 
mouth 
shut tight 

Question 3:

When you tell a few friends and family members about your cancer, what some seem to hear is:

1. “I would appreciate it if you would not share my diagnosis with anyone.”
   
   
2. “I would appreciate it if you would share my diagnosis with anyone.”
   
   

Question 4:

So-and-So’s response to your disclosure about your cancer diagnosis is:

1. comforting. She says, “Please let me know how I can support you.”
   
   
2. surprising. She says, “I thought it looked like you’d lost some weight.”
   
   

mouths, 

like chasms 
gaping, wide 

open. who could fathom 
there’d be no bottom 
in sight?

—Long-listed Finalist in MacQ’s Cheribun Challenge #3

Tracy Royce’s

words have appeared in Bending Genres, contemporary haibun online, The Ekphrastic Review, Frogpond, MacQueen’s Quinterly, ONE ART, and elsewhere. She lives in Southern California, where she enjoys hiking, playing board games, and obsessing over Richard Widmark movies. You can find her on Bluesky.