Forget Magazine. Remember, Remember, Remember.

The Nike Representative*
by Matthew Dorrell

Nike didn't desert me.
As I got sicker,
it meant everything.

I didn't fully see, until the cancer, how
we fight every day
against the creeping negatives
of the world, how we struggle
daily against the slow lapping of cynicism.

Don't talk to me
about the cold world
of business. Cancer was
teaching me daily to examine
my fellow human beings more
deeply, to throw out my previous
assumptions and over-
simplifications.

I instantly became close friends
with the Nike representative
assigned to cycling, and so
it was no accident
that he was one of the first people
I told about my cancer.

I hadn't said it aloud
yet I opened my mouth, and
closed it, and opened it again. "I
have cancer,"
I said.

There was a moment of silence
on the other end of the line and
then Scott spoke
calmly, almost casually. "Well,
don't worry about us,"
he said, "We're with you."

It was my friend Scott MacEachern,
a representative from Nike
assigned to work with me.

______

* This is a found poem. Each stanza is a section lifted, unedited, from the Lance Armstrong autobiography It's Not About the Bike.
Here are the page numbers for each stanza, if you like that sort of thing:
1 - p123-4
2 - p114
3 - p124-5
4 - p123
5 - p15
6 - p123
7 - p15

Matthew Dorrell got a haircut and is hoping for a real job.