Simple Node.js server no data received from post.

I have set up a simple server in Node.js. I am trying to get the post data from the request. I have tried sending the data with $.post() and by a simple HTML form with method="post"

if(request.method.toUpperCase() === "POST") {
    var $data;
    request.on("data", function (chunk) {$data += chunk});
    request.on("end", function () 
        console.log($data);
    });
    var message = "Settings Saved"
    response.writeHead(
        "200",
        "OK",
        {
            "access-control-allow-origin" : origin,
            "content-type" : "text/plain",
            "content-length" : message.length
        }
    );
    return(response.end(message));
}

Node returns the Status:200 and everything looks good, but no matter where I put it, the console.log($data) always spits out undefined (BTW I have also tried this without the $ under a different variable name).

Looking at all the other SO questions about this that I could find did not have a solution for me.