I had my second (routine) mammogram on Friday. In honor of (hopefully) nothing, here’s my poem which appears in Four Blue Eggs. Mammograms are the best detection against breast cancer. Please schedule yours. Saving lives is worth a few squishes.
First Mammogram
Around your waist,
the heavy
reminder of radiation’s paradox:
destroy in order to save.
Contorted and squeezed
between those black
and icy plates,
breasts lose their pink.
On the monitor,
a white sphere glows
like a waxing moon
against
a starless sky;
bright, lunar plains
of tissue inherit
the elemental factions
of light and dark.
There are no blemishes yet,
no knotted anomalies
peering from behind
tungsten and detached electrons.
The silhouette
does not wane
but remains inert.
As you watch the screen,
this lace terrain of smoldering
luminosity is beautifully
static, killing time,
waiting for the variable
to appear, waiting
for the blackest night, waiting
for the new, undetectable moon.
Amy Nawrocki 