Your doctors believed
the uterus was enough
to protect the rest
of the body from itself.
The first time you cracked
a nail on the wooden floor
I heard you say imperfect
of the dance studio,
like the anomaly of radiation
to kill the cell, but not the host.
Or that summer of fireworks
& algaed ocean skin—
before your final surgery,
you asked me to love you
as a poet, always trembling,
always preparing for grief—
like stretched-thin leather
of pink ballet shoes, faded
dangling in the corner
of that dampened room,
mold blossoming on ribbon,
a stench in the air I wanted
to pretend was something else,
your whisper, I’m pain free
–
Minadora Macheret is a Ph.D. student in poetry and a teaching fellow at the University of North Texas. She is a poetry editor for Devilfish Review. Her work has appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Rogue Agent, Connotation Press, and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook Love Me, Anyway (Porkbelly Press, 2018). She likes to travel across the country with her beagle, Aki.