“Urogynecology”

I’d spent years trying to find a way
out of myself. Wounds wrapped ‘round
my insides like so much kudzu
on a house, I lacked 
answers. I lacked hope.

But you shuffled in gently and said
Breathe. Said I think I can help.
Said Here is the church, here is the steeple,
I am here on Earth to help some people
find out what’s wrong and what’s not right
we’ll get you fixed up real soon - hold tight.

Weaved your hands through my abdomen -
sinew and flesh and rot. Believed 
in my hurt as if it were a tangible thing,
standing in the room with us. 
You shook its hand and announced
that it’d be out on its ass by dinner time.
That hanging from me like the 
Gardens of Babylon wouldn’t be possible
on your watch. Your time
was too precious to be dealing with anguish,
so you pushed it in a corner 
and tried to make me look away.

Tried to make me forget it. But 
in all the Lot’s wife that I am, I looked
back. 

I didn’t turn to salt. I didn’t
turn to stone. Instead,

I turned into someone with expectations
for the first time since she got sick. Someone
with wishes she’d long since stored
on the highest shelf, knowing she would 
never need them. Knowing the world
would never carve a place for her
in the wood of its well-worn backboard,
slicing her from its graces with each
cut: like scalpel to skin, I was destined

to lie still in bright sanitized rooms,
large lights looming overhead to help
hands fix hearts fix minds fix me.

Leaping. Trusting you was leaping 
into a sky full of nothing and I am
still waiting to land, still poised above 
skyscrapers and bridges watching life
go on for everyone else
as I stay trapped in this star, with you,

waiting for things we don’t know
the answers to. But if I am to be
cobbled together with physicians until
the day I die, I feel blessed

to have you with me. I am glad life found us
toddling along the same road and chose
to mend me with your spirit.

To seal my cuts with the glue 
of the love you radiate. My hurt

will likely never cease, but it has grown
easier. Grown softer. Grown into a gory
piece of my background that is peppered
with your good acts, both big and small.

You were the city on a hill when I was
searching for light - a kindness in the cold

that will wrap me up when things look grim

Thank you for all the ways you exist and
thank you for all the futures
you helped make possible.

I’m grateful and amazed
to be alive in a world
where people like you bring life
back into the shells we sometimes become.

And with my face finally to the sun, I breathe.