Her legs are made to spread
between steel. Each day’s
examining room, paper stuck
under sweating skin.
To the hormone headaches.
To the pills snagging her throat.
Turn off the light, see how
her skin glows green,
its bioluminescence makes
her mouth a blinking light
on a deserted beach. The wanting
is a weathervane without wind.
Not so fast, she’s back with a plastic
tube in her uterus. The Doctor,
it’s not supposed to take this long.
How the body continues to elude.
Dye races through her fallopian
tubes, cirrus clouds inked
inside her. For later tattooed
under her tongue. She casks
her eyes down to count the squares.
The tiles always a little bit dirty.
CARRIE BENNETT is a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellow and author of biography of water, The Land Is a Painted Thing, Lost Letters and Other Animals, and several chapbooks from dancing girl press. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches writing at Boston University. She lives with her family in Somerville, MA.
