The Growing
By Liz Harms
Beneath me, a bright pool of blood
like the puddle of hardened sugar around
a candied apple. The color too sanguine
for the following ache—a cyst. Diameter
of a new crab apple—chronic, the doctor said,
lucky we caught it early; a risk of sepsis. Lucky,
the pain wasn’t serious. Pain, however un-
profound, can unstring the mind, a whole psyche
discordant as an off-pitch piano, yes,
but pain, too, may clarify. Take it out—
take it all out I said I don’t want children
& he said one day your husband might. Silly
pain, I call it now. Silly, egotistical pain.
A new doctor monitors my ovaries. She
circles the small cysts on the sonogram.
I name them. Hart, after the last doctor,
his silly little luck. Anthony, after the
Wisconsinite. If they grow enough, she will cut
them out. I’ll keep them swimming
in a diaphanous blue sea of formaldehyde.
Maybe send Hart to his daddy.