squeezing the sad bladder
BY NICOLE CALLIHAN
of the boxed wine I wonder if I might have done things differently if yes I had no shame but if perhaps I should have operated with some sense of shame or begin to operate with some sense of shame now that my ovaries are removed now that my breasts are removed now that I have a scar from os coxae to os coxae and my umbilicus cum craft-project cross-stitch is slightly cock-eyed o lord twisted shit abounds many women say or at least write on the facebook support page that the medicine makes sex feel like broken glass and I thumb it I do not heart I concur and also there are the eyeballs which while naked cannot see the borealis but when aided by the phone can see it all do we want to see it all the adipocytes collecting subcutaneously my mother says that sixty-seven is the worst age but I think she said the same of forty-seven too tho at forty-seven I had my brief glamorous cancer phase when I got so thin people told me I looked beautiful eclipsed by post-cancer when then they said I looked strong was I strong am I and then post-post cancer which consists mostly of eating cheese and fearing my lungs are filling with tumors or are already filled I loved that one summer the summer the cancer was growing in me but I did not yet know to call it synchronous bilateral malignancy so I just called it loneliness or aging and one very sunny afternoon tho not hot I asked my neighbor if she would mind if each time I passed her windchime I rang it with the tip of my finger and she said she didn’t care and I said thank you I will be the wind and she said ok sure be the wind
