Waiting for the Second Biopsy

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
Sylvia Plath

I walk around thinking it,
You do not do… black shoe.
When did my breast become
that black shoe? that dead bag of God?

I want to be done with them both,
dead and living tissue, beggar,
demanding, draining blood
through bulging veins
that do not deliver.
Once pleasure givers,
but never givers of milk,
useless, shapely, hedonists. Done.

There are dark words in my head
for dark thoughts and times.
To help, I envision instead
zipped up, clean seams,
trying on a paper doll body.

And yet…

Another poem calls out,
by Lucille Clifton,
about the loss of a uterus:
patient / as a sock…
stocking I will not need..
my black bag of desire.
where am I going… without you?

That is why, in the mirror
when I speak the words,
my breast is a big black sock
that does not do,
because I am confused
about change and emptiness
even as I prepare to let go,
to call death death, and walk
in the opposite direction.

The poems referenced in this poem are “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath and “poem to my uterus” by Lucille Clifton.
The poem came out of three anxious weeks and two biopsies which, fortunately, ended with reports reading “benign, benign, benign,” and no need for surgical intervention.