Staple

It was part of the ritual.  They had to put one staple in the center of my bottom lip.  The staple had to be put in my lip with a witness present.  The witness was allowed to hold my hand.  I desperately wanted the witness holding my hand. I kept walking around simultaneously trying to find the one who would hold my hand as I tried to avoid the staple– the thin, sharp, gleaming piece of metal waiting to be pressed into my flesh.

Uterus Onion

My uterus is coming out of me as an onion. A very large, pear-shaped onion– a uterus-onion, slightly tomatoey bloody.  I don’t know if it is actually mine; if I have had a hysterectomy in vegetable form.  I am in a dressing room with mirrors, musty carpet, and dresses hanging over the swinging door.  My mother is asking me, “Is it yours?”

I don’t know, and I am holding the thing, the bulb with skins, in my right hand and wondering if it is mine how I will ever push it back up into me– into my cavity.  She keeps asking, “Do you think it’s yours?  Can you feel if it’s missing?”

“How would I feel if it’s not there?” I ask her back in a panic.  ”I don’t know,” she says, “but there must be an explanation for what’s in your hand.”

Another person in the changing room starts to talk about the dark place; the cavern you can’t see that holds so many memories, babies, life, injustices, pleasures.

I’m pretty sure it’s going to be hard to tell if my uterus is missing, and I don’t want to search for the dark place either.  I also don’t want to have to find a way to stick this huge uterus-onion back inside of me, when the bottom alone seems to measure six inches wide.

I hope it is mine, and I hope it is not mine. As in, how fantastic for my uterus to really come out of me like this, but on the other hand, how horrific that the space I was hoping to grow children in has turned into an edible part of dinner which will make people cry when they cut into it and fold back its layers.

If it is mine, I want my internal human house back.

Combing

I sit combing someone’s hair.  I suspect she is my child.  Her hair keeps growing like seaweed and I keep combing it.  I am yammering about to a witch or a ghost behind me.  The ocean is in my ears.  The constant movement of it.  I should be with it.  I daydream as I comb, of being with the ocean– of not being in a constant state of combing.  I lift my head to tilt it away from the acknowledgement of the ghost or the witch, or even my daughter.  My ears begin to leak and then gush ocean.  I can’t find my breath but I am smiling.  I am in my own aquarium now.  I am a beautiful sea creature.