Sterile by Rachel Cohen
“Sometimes,
in the deepest, quietest parts of the night,
as the black sky turns opaque
and loneliness abounds,
I find my hands creeping up
to the dark,
angry slash on my abdomen
still a vibrant red,
eleven years after the fact.
My fingers caress this furious divot
as my thoughts begin to run wild,
uninhibited
by the cage in which they are usually kept.
“for my own good”,
I tell myself-
or at least I think so.
They form a cascading waterfall
of words and images,
exclamations and questions,
ruminations and concerns
that rush towards the front of my mind
with a frightening energy
until I have no choice
but to set down my previous focus
and pay them attention.
I think of the space that once held
my uterus and ovaries-
the sacred place where hope once lay
and life began.
And I try to picture what it must look like,
now that my precious organs are gone.
Has it become a yawning,
cavernous,
seemingly-endless black hole
of scorched earth that has all
but been forgotten?
Are its edges infused with the searing-white anger
I feel daily,
thinking about the surgeon
who promised me health with this sacrifice,
but never delivered?
Has it become a boundaryless vessel
to contain all of the guilt that constantly threatens to consume me?
The guilt that asks me why I rushed the surgery,
and prioritized my pain relief
instead of just waiting two weeks
to freeze my eggs
for the future?
The guilt that tells me that I have no right to mourn all my losses
while my two healthy, living children sit beside me.
Has this space become a maze of scar tissue,
morbidly decorating my surviving organs with twisted rings,
its new veins
steadily pumping blood to the tune of
my desperate longing?
Longing
to create more life
to keep the mitzvah of mikvah
to have a normally functioning female body
to be like everyone else.
Painful musings dance around my mind
until an intolerable feeling of desperation creeps through my veins,
and freezes my heart.
And I’m left wondering how much more of these thoughts and feelings I can take
before it just shatters into a million translucent pieces.
So I carefully remove my fingers from the furrowed skin beneath them,
while securing my wild thoughts once again beneath their chains
and berate myself harshly for ever allowing myself to think about
before.
Before grief was palpable beneath my fingertips,
Before hope was carved out of my body with a scalpel,
Before I became sterile.”