In deep breath I surrender,

submerged in anesthetics

Surgeon comes like a gardener,

cuts flowers from my core.

Smiling in my sleep.

I awake astonished

touching the soft skin around my middle, patch of cotton

gauze on the left and right, an X cut into my belly button

I possess the mark of the woman.

Soft. Here. Thirsty. There will be no placenta.

My body had been rid of the unbirthable.

It took my right fallopian tube.

There seems to be a problem with my foot. Forward.

Something invisible, grown from the wrong place,

follows me . .

Has me tasting iron. Copper extracted from

pathway to uterus. Some metals don’t mix well.

Remembering when I was 7,

the electric bite of aluminum-

foil wrapper when I tried to chew it

with my spearmint gum, my ride arrives.

I am wheeled to the door. That evening

I hobble into class. It is not a comeback.

It is a get up and keep going.