For some a bump means a baby, for my mother it meant a son—a son who found his words in high school and still has the pencil bump to prove it. For some a bump is a lipoma and in witches, the prerequisite wart; a bump, for some, is the gateway to euphoria, or a touching of knuckles between friends. Sometimes it means a bite by a spider, or a mosquito buzzing somewhere in the dark; a bump from a potshot with a BB gun, or a cat’s nail hooked into defenseless skin. But at some point a bump is one too many. The culprit is cancer—stage IV. Yet another bump is installed above her breast, and the two of us sit and play Words with Friends while the regimen of tongue-twister poisons begins. The cancer cells may cower in submission—my turn, I play the word SHRINK—but sometimes the bastards ignite a blaze and begin a bloodless revolution instead. Like gluttons they gorge and like rabbits they breed; on fat and muscle and bone they guzzle, erecting their ghastly guillotine. My mother waves a white flag hopefully, to no avail, and like an old-timey gangster the cancer vows to bump her off in the end. It invades her right thigh, her hip, her eye, her thumb, and before long the poor woman is overwhelmed and overrun. When she walks it seems her legs have grown shorter, when she breathes there’s a riot in her lungs; I sit holding her hand and try not to think of the bump that will constitute her grave. But she doesn’t want a burial, no funeral should be held; I look up how much ash a human body produces—to aid in online urn selection—and help to sort the funky clothes and clunky jewelry which she’ll never wear again. Because someday has quietly crept closer, played leapfrog with the rest of her life—what was once just a bump in the road marks the end of the road suddenly.

Jean-Luke Swanepoel was born in South Africa, and he currently lives in California with his husband. His work has most recently appeared in Redivider, Electric Literature’s The Commuter, and Columbia Journal. His sophomore novel, The Book of David, was published in January 2025. Find him on Goodreads at www.goodreads.com/jlswanepoel.