All around me, trees welcome spring. Normally I love to watch this process, but this year is different.

If you’ve been reading for a while, you know of my mother’s amazing cancer journey and how it is drawing to a close. You may not know that my oldest sister died, at 55, of ovarian cancer in 2000. And now my remaining sister has discovered suspicious lumps; her doctor biopsied a lymph node and removed a fist-sized breast mass yesterday; pathology should be in by Monday.

I, thankfully, remain healthy.

Back to those trees. I’m stuck in a metaphor loop.

Dark branches against the sky are lungs. Bronchi. Bronchioles. Alveoli. All reaching toward the sky in a gasp for air.

Dark branches against the sky are the blue veins visible under the milky white skin of a breast.

Dark branches against the sky are the circulatory system.

Dark branches against the sky are the lymphatic conduits that run throughout our bodies.

Dark branches against the sky take the shape of a brain, tracing the folds and valleys, mimicking the neuron. Axon. Soma. Dendrite.

The tangled nests of squirrels are tumors. The small nests of birds are tumors. Fruit trees bloom with disease. The green buds are tumors, coursing their way though lymph, blood, and tissue.

The process of spring, which should mean growth and blooming and change, has become malignant.