The Silent Beast

It lurks within,
The silent beast,
It travels through our veins.
It moves about
From cell to cell,
And brings fatigue and pain.
There are ways
To slow it down,
To halt it in its spread;
But only brief,
This slight reprieve,
From the beast that wants us dead.
There's different kinds,
The common lump;
A painful, reddish rash;
It can start small,
And spread around,
An indistinct thick mass.
There's surgery,
There's medicine,
There's radioactive rays.
There's hope and prayer
That this works
So we might see more days.
There is no cure,
No surefast fix,
And all our days we borrow
From this beast-
Metastatic cancer-
Which robs us of tomorrow.