I: EXIST

Examine; a shell. Created by minerals flushed from internal mantle, stations
at the edge of a current. Within, flesh curls in endless night cultivating
a beautiful surprise or an invader or a secret in isolation. In December
I’m unaware you exist. A squall mounts in the depths of my abdomen.
So sudden is my onset of agony I slip into dark waters & wake, some unknown measure of misery-time later;
I really don’t want to die alone
in a sad airport hotel in Dallas.
I’ll find out 10 months later this isn’t your fault,
you’re completely unrelated. This pain is a kidney stone
but it takes blood tests & ultrasounds & ultrasounds &
a colonoscopy & manual exams & an oncologist,
best in the state, to know that. It’s not until you’re exposed,
white & smooth as a pearl, full as a blood orange that I think

II: SPLIT

damn, surgery tech has come
a long way in 11 years

since my last pearl
maybe an ancestor of yours?

Dr. Landers asks if I want to see you
& I don’t know you’re a pearl yet

don’t even know what color an ovary is irl.
She hands me 3 glossy 8x10s.

My eye is so entangled with the pixels,
resolution, I hardly register your shape.

I redden, embarrassed, thinking you might be here
in the flesh with me, again, my yielding, sacrificial self.

The sight & sheen of my pinks & scarlets, so tender, so safe inside
creates a simple splitting of myself as the swell of a singular word threatens

III: WAIT

but you’re not that word.
You’re rapid
unlike time
or sometimes like time.
But calm,
so calm in the
waves of my
body, sealed
away, waiting
with patience
to be known,
recognized,
maybe loved
for the complexity you are.