Let Down Your Hair
The scars on my stomach are two years healed, but they will need to
reopen me again. Not today or tomorrow, but someday, when my pelvis
fills with a legion of lesions or a second cyst swallows
my ovary. Hair, they said, the cyst was full of hair. That can happen.
Sometimes it’s teeth. A set of molars, chomping down on eggs
like caviar. A ponytail
climbed around my ovary as if it were the links of chain holding up
the playground swing. Higher, swing higher. I can no sooner
make a baby, but I can braid hair in my abdomen—I can grow
a Rapunzel and her only chore is to strangle
the very breath from any viable eggs I stored in the only cache I have.
Rapunzel the child-killer, Rapunzel the mercenary
sent by a disease no one studies because
no one cares as long as I keep bleeding, bleeding, bleeding,
and stay down. It’s cruel
how every day I look pregnant, and I am pregnant with a six
on the pain scale—you know, the distressed face that must carry on when
my flesh is a bruised peach, festering below the fuzzy skin and
soon a surgeon will need to cut it out again. They used to
burn the foreign cells like they burned witches and saints—
Joan sobbed in her holy grave when they burned away women with
their outgrowths, cauterized their dark deaths
before they learned they needed to excise it, exhume the disorder or it would grow
back faster. Just a little trim, in and outpatient. They sliced
into my layers of bubblegum skin, bubbling
boiling fat, and weaved blanket of muscle to reach the cavern of my middle.
I would digest my own heart to never again be filleted on that table,
spread-eagled under the florescent lights,
while they lodged a glorified stick, slick with medical-grade lube, into my womb
and manipulated it. We will then inspect the outside of the uterus for endometriosis.
No one told me how much it would hurt when I awoke, the stabbing
pains up, up, up into my core. They did tell me the stick would make me shed,
would make me bleed. As long as I hemorrhage, it’s fine, right?
As long as I keep yelling Burn the witch and cheer when they
set our crowns aflame—I can smell the tinge in the air.
Come on, child, let down your hair.
reopen me again. Not today or tomorrow, but someday, when my pelvis
fills with a legion of lesions or a second cyst swallows
my ovary. Hair, they said, the cyst was full of hair. That can happen.
Sometimes it’s teeth. A set of molars, chomping down on eggs
like caviar. A ponytail
climbed around my ovary as if it were the links of chain holding up
the playground swing. Higher, swing higher. I can no sooner
make a baby, but I can braid hair in my abdomen—I can grow
a Rapunzel and her only chore is to strangle
the very breath from any viable eggs I stored in the only cache I have.
Rapunzel the child-killer, Rapunzel the mercenary
sent by a disease no one studies because
no one cares as long as I keep bleeding, bleeding, bleeding,
and stay down. It’s cruel
how every day I look pregnant, and I am pregnant with a six
on the pain scale—you know, the distressed face that must carry on when
my flesh is a bruised peach, festering below the fuzzy skin and
soon a surgeon will need to cut it out again. They used to
burn the foreign cells like they burned witches and saints—
Joan sobbed in her holy grave when they burned away women with
their outgrowths, cauterized their dark deaths
before they learned they needed to excise it, exhume the disorder or it would grow
back faster. Just a little trim, in and outpatient. They sliced
into my layers of bubblegum skin, bubbling
boiling fat, and weaved blanket of muscle to reach the cavern of my middle.
I would digest my own heart to never again be filleted on that table,
spread-eagled under the florescent lights,
while they lodged a glorified stick, slick with medical-grade lube, into my womb
and manipulated it. We will then inspect the outside of the uterus for endometriosis.
No one told me how much it would hurt when I awoke, the stabbing
pains up, up, up into my core. They did tell me the stick would make me shed,
would make me bleed. As long as I hemorrhage, it’s fine, right?
As long as I keep yelling Burn the witch and cheer when they
set our crowns aflame—I can smell the tinge in the air.
Come on, child, let down your hair.
Jan / Feb 2024
Kaleigh Walter is a poet, prose writer, and nonprofit fundraiser living in Minneapolis. She has an MFA in Fiction from Concordia University, St. Paul, and she's working on her first novel.
Art: Donna Morello, Collage