My body as terra nullius. My body as celestial. My body as dysfunctional.
This water-damaged waiting room. This explicable flood of couples with
expectant grins. The grim single-mother with hair past her waist and
plastic Dollar Tree bag as purse. The girl in the hallway asking about my
hair, diamond studs on either side of her lip pinning her smile. This exam
table. This white sheet below my waist. This white sheet reeking of bleach.
Your wisecracking Resident. Your overly-friendly Resident. Your Resident
making me anonymous. Your Resident making me ashamed. I will show
you, Resident, the one corner of Detroit where the houses love me, my sheen,
since I am as cavernous, as broke-down. Where the houses don’t talk back or
ask how the procedure went. The vast territory of my ovaries on screen, their
black holes, their stellar mass. The whole solar system is bursting, splintering,
flaring, and I am not. Planets spin on their axes and people are launched into
space. I am the territory no one will inhabit. The borderlands of motherhood
and not again. Want has no business here.