The Growing

Beneath me, a bright pool of  blood

like the puddle of  hardened sugar around

a candied apple. The color too sanguine

for the following ache—a cyst. Diameter

of a new crab apple—chronic, the doctor said,

lucky we caught it early; a risk of sepsis. Lucky,

the pain wasn’t serious. Pain, however un-

profound, can unstring the mind, a whole psyche

discordant as an off-pitch piano, yes,

but pain, too, may clarify. Take it out—

take it all out  I said  I don’t want children

& he said one day your husband might. Silly

pain, I call it now. Silly, egotistical pain.

A new doctor monitors my ovaries. She

circles the small cysts on the sonogram.

I name them. Hart, after the last doctor,

his silly little luck. Anthony, after the

Wisconsinite. If they grow enough, she will cut

them out. I’ll keep them swimming

in a diaphanous blue sea of formaldehyde.

                        Maybe send Hart to his daddy.