Origin Story
A teenage cancer survivor, this poemee shared how she learned from the younger children she witnessed undergoing the same treatment she was.
“You just see a difference in the way a child approaches it,” she said. “They have the moment, they have the pain, they have the shot, and then they just go back to playing. I always took strength from the way little kids would handle it.”
Gray Davidson Carroll, Listener Poet
Our Why: Stories from the American Cancer Society’s Patient Support Team
Featured at Listening Together: Poems from a Year of Conversations 2025
Where Do the Children Play?
By Gray Davidson Carroll, Listener Poet
After Yusuf Islam
In the hospital waiting room
the children build their castles
block by block and go in search
of missing puzzle pieces.
They are awaiting the results
that will determine their lives.
Awaiting the treatments that will
prolong them.
But this does not concern them.
They are concerned most with living
their lives. With where their last
corner piece is hiding
and whether everything will collapse
if one more block gets piled on top.
Outside, light shines through
the window, dissolving
the barrier between the world
and the world within it. In the distance,
you can hear the sounds of someone
laughing. In another room, someone cries.
