When the nurse asks if I have a surgical history<\/p>\n
I begin to form the word of my uterus and its<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
drawing out, consider inviting her into the recovery room<\/p>\n
filled with women giddy from their return to somatic<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
solitude, then into the smoke-filled apartment with its<\/p>\n
futon mattress and warm bottle of retsina, reward<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
just for time, passing from before to after<\/p>\n
it. I begin to form the word, but the word\u2014its roundness, its flat vacuum<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
of a face\u2014swallows its own tail. After the medical abortion<\/p>\n
I imagined a fish, small fry flapping, and still in some Boston Harbor<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
it haunts a stand of seagrass, is haunted in turn by its half-sibling<\/p>\n
the surgically aborted, ripped from stories<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
too. Sibling\u2019s sibling I do not speak of, my double-standard shame, my<\/p>\n
ill-gotten fishlet, in my mind I hold you in loving kindness and say no<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When the nurse asks if I have a surgical history \/ I begin to form the word of my uterus\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":6742,"template":"","categories":[9,49,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6728","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-literary-features","category-poetry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n