published in MacGuffin fall 2022                                                              


                                                                Load
 
You carry your boob full of cancer around for a week. That’s the wait imposed until you can meet the specialist and get further details. You take it to an out-of-town wedding, and to yoga class, where it seems heavier and offs your balance, and at the dinner table it seems to sag more than its mate, though they share a continuous bra wire.

You were tipped off by the radiologist calling with the news. It’s a nurse who calls when there’s good news. You’ve had it before. The radiologist talks in science words and metric decimal points, until you say stop, it’s my boob, and you use that word. The pause is long, then he names a stage and uses the phrase “mildly aggressive,” which is how you like your men.
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The waiting seems longer than your entire childhood, but on the sudden morning of the appointment, you wake from pretend sleep, with the dreams of insensible scenes linked only by fear. You get in the car with such jerky motions, you could be crippled. You wanted this, but now it’s come like lightning, ready to electrocute.