Cyster | Dana Murphy

I’ve returned to the university hospital
an ellipsis long used to periods as
a doctor has finally listened to me,
has acknowledged that
this kernel inside rubbed-raw flesh,
smooth as a tapioca pearl
when quiet
but the reason I can no longer ride
a bike, this glitch of being sentimentally
active, which became infected, then refused to heal,
this underground node,
a frozen bulb never to flower,
has become a companion to my every move.

My doctorate is only real
because my doctor is also a young woman,
our appointment a mirror
to gaze upon ourselves,
to drink in deeply
the birth control pills she takes back-to-back
to refuse periods because
she’s not courting pregnancy.
And while my flow is already a capillary-thin whisper
of its former self, benumbed by the pill,
her words bloom smiles in my cells
at the promise of one month lapping into the next.
When I open my legs
to the stirrups, it takes her all of two seconds to say,
Yeah, we gotta take care of that.

I am ready for the surgery that
three other doctors refused to approve.
The anesthesia is running
smooth as a bath.
My doctor asks me to count back from 10,
her fingers stroking the top of my right hand, 9,
like the delphiniums I saw for the first time, 8,
having missed the peonies, 7,
like the bride and her bridesmaids floating
through the arboretum . . .

DANA MURPHY lives in California. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in carte blanche magazine, The 2River View, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Lily Poetry Review, and Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. In 2024–25, she is a Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center.

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