My ovaries are unremarkable, the report says. Hormone-radiant little moons, stale little sugar cookies, a left/right pair scooped on the baking sheet of my abdomen. Petite spooning white beans nestled restful.
My uterus is a swollen little fist of a dusty, upside-down world, a steaming Chernobyl overtaken, twisting volunteer stalks and calcified coral overgrowth. The tattered wallpaper is thick and tender with nostalgia.
A pulsing, un-sweet mango, a non-compliant factory shuttered, a dark, ivy-laced property in the woods where children once were raised, a last-week rabbit on country road, fur still soft, negative space where eyeballs once were.
My uterus is the soft, brown celery forgotten in the drawer, the greasy chunk of exhaust-covered ice my truck squeaks over, the curving slice of rust-colored salmon on the late-night grocery store shelf when your head rings peri-hangover.
My hand curves and slides over the silky space between my hipbones. If I push down, do I feel what the doctor felt, in centimeters? My uterus hides like a spooked cat squeezed deep under the couch.
On Thursday, my doctor will tell me about SWAT teams busting down cervixes, slash and burn methods, foreclosures, condemnations, nailing hurricane plywood to bay windows, and I’ll sign off. I’ll miss her like sidewalk chalk and bubbles, like cracking photo albums, like maple saplings, like grandma’s rhubarb pie, like baby clothes outgrown, like hair trimmings and fingernail clippings, like last year’s birthday balloon, uncelebrated.