01 December 2009

Final Day of the Poem-a-Day Challenge

Hysterectomy

When I fell asleep the nurse was still
laughing. I don't remember the
joke. And while I was sleeping they
drew the knife and cut it out. Out! And
in the dark of anesthesia I couldn't
yell, Stop! I've changed my mind.

They said to me, Don't be afraid. Then they
tore me open and harvested a pink plump pear of
an organ. And while they offered a sacrifice to
the god of bloody things I was crawling through
a sea of sage. Crawling. But my wrists were
tied. And my mouth was tied. The other
women walked past me with their baskets of
fruit. They pretended not to see me twitching at
their heels.

There were no telephones where
I went and kisses were hard to
come by. And no one explained that
feeling of being taken from one world and
placed in another. That feeling. It was the
opposite of waking up on a hospital bed with
an ache where you're missing something.

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