This time I’m breast.

Face down, breasts hanging

as still as I could be.

I brought my breasts, body, here,

it feels like. I am not

exactly

my body today.

I remember choosing

dying in my sleep

during the childhood game,

as if we could predict or choose

that kind of ending.

I repeat

the soft animal of your body –

it hurts to forget the geese, Mary Oliver’s name,

to rest my middle on a plastic support,

even if covered with a towel.

In the waiting room,

I don’t think of Elizabeth Bishop

and the horrifying

breasts in the National Geographic

she read in another waiting room

as a child.

I am an adult, reading about park rangers

working with beavers to save the forests

through dams.

To trust an animal, to trust ourselves.

To trust that nature can be contained.

I am sure I will die of cancer.

Does this stave off the car accidents?

————————————–

Chloe Yelena Miller called us from Washington, DC.

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