Prompt # 106 part 2

I got mamogramed this morning at the Carol Ann Read Breast Health Center which has moved and been seriously fucking re-decorated since I was last there in 2006. There are now waterfalls, bird sounds, this soothing green everywhere and they give you this butterfly card and a super soft spa-ish robe and then send you to look for the butterfly door. There was a television on in the second waiting room which had nature scenes playing on it. I don't want to sound like an asshole but really I kept expecting a cult leader to show up or to be led out back to the buses that would take us to the farm like the time the Moonies almost got me. Did I tell you that story yet? I can't remember. 

Part of me appreciated these beautiful surroundings and part of me was just looking at all of the women who were being moved though with factory like efficiency and we all had the same scared faces on. The peaceful green walls just gave our terror a prettier back drop and made us look pasty. I feel really mean. They've clearly worked hard to make this as pleasant an experience as possible but I was relieved when I asked one of the women who worked there if she liked the environment or if it drove her crazy and she told me she wished they'd turn the damn water off because it made her feel like she had to pee all the time. 

I think it would be cool if they gave you a cup of tea and didn't worry or spend so much money on the decor. A cup of tea or coffee would give us something to do with our hands. Or maybe Lego packets. So that we could play while we are waiting to put our clothes back on and our faces back on that aren't full of terror. The second room is the bamboo room. I kept wondering which room was the cancer room. All of these themed rooms. And the stickers they put on my nipples had flowers on them. 

Would I have been happier in a seedy building somewhere with peeling paint? 

Maybe. More comfortable certainly. It's what I'm used to. 

The good news is that they told me it looks good. Which is actually great news. Years ago when they thought I probably had breast cancer and i saw the oncologist and carried around these giant awkward xrays bordered in pink,  on all the buses where people looked at me as if i were a plague carrier. Which I get. For all that we've had plenty of practice as a culture dealing with cancer we sure don't know how to. The right questions to ask or things to say or ways to be supportive. We aren't prepared for it. And that pink on the bus. The way people looked even when I tried to hide the breast drawing on the outside and turn it towards me. People looked at me with pity or curiosity and men eyed my breasts openly wondering if they were real or what? 

And the procedure with the giant machine that was so noisy and the giant needle thing and they sucked out a bunch of tissue and dropped in the titanium clip I was totally prepared to know that it was or it wasn't death tissue and then afterwards after they put a bunch of pressure on my breast and got it wrapped up sent me home and I waited for the call and waited for the call. When it came the nurse sounded strange. So bad news I thought. Then she said the tissue was negative for cancer. So good news I said aloud. Then she dropped her voice to a whisper and said that they thought they got the wrong tissue. 

And then I just gave up. Said Fuck You to the medical system where a nurse had to whisper a truth that would never get written down, to cancer, to not knowing, to the wondering. I just said Fuck You and was done with it. Which of course is not what you are supposed to do. 

I said fuck you to the scary lump.  Scary because of the size, shape and how it felt. Not the kind of lump you go- oh probably just this or that. No it was the kind of lump that made every doctor get a little serious. I was confused and the nurse was awkward because she was taking a risk telling me that after all the steps I went through they had gotten it wrong. 

So  I  never went back. Whichever baby RN did my physical in December didn't like how the tissue felt in my left breast. I agreed. Another baby RN had the same reaction. I got an order for the mammogram. They did the order wrong. I gave up again. Which is not what your supposed to do. So I finally went back in to get the order again. This time they got the order right but didn't put the information down about the tissue they were feeling.

In the midst of all of this and the hospital thing which I don't want to write about because it was gross and scary except to say I'm lucky I have a kid like Rosie who was my daughter, advocate and rock star person who made sure everyone did their jobs and then rocked the prompt out- I found out I needed to be worried about a friend of mine but I couldn't quite understand what my other friend was saying on the phone. I've since figured out she just had a biopsy. I'm caught up now. Sad I didn't know, couldn't help and even if I did know what could I have done to help? 

Well I'd have made soup I think. If I had known and been around and not been later in the hospital. I would have made soup and walked the dog if she wanted me to. I always go to food. 

Because I"m awkward with all the rest. It's hard to say what I am thinking which is underneath the cynical criticism of the fancy spa breast factory today- what I am thinking is can we just be alright please? Can my friend be alright because I love her and I want her to be okay. Can we all of us all pasty faced against the green be alright? Because even in the factory zen spa setting I loved all of us and wanted us all to be okay. Can I be okay? Will my daughter? My sister? My lover? 

Can we all be okay please? 

That's what I want. 

Okay where does that ramble leave us? 

What about a list of body parts on one side of the page and then the sentence fragment.... feels like or has to say....

So this is what Breast feels like. or This is what feet have to say. 

Or 

What about when someone we love is in danger or we don't know what will happen. Mortality. What does that feel like. What do we do with that? 

Here is the poem. Before I found it I found a long list- too long a list of dead poets when I searched for a relevant poem. 

Kiss your people today. Or tell them you love them. Eat good food if you can. Have good sex if it's an option. Breathe in the air that doesn't want to rain here or that might snow up in Oregon. 

Thank you for being here. 

Nude Descending

BY ALICIA OSTRIKER

Like a bowerbird trailing a beakful of weeds   

Like prize ribbons for the very best

The lover, producer   

Of another’s pleasure

He whom her swollen lips await

Might wing through any day of the decade

A form of health insurance   

For which it is never too late

Titanic, silver brush

Hindenburg, of exploding cigars a climax

The watery below, the fiery above

Ashes of print between—pigment between

If the crippled woman were to descend   

From her bed, her fortress beyond midnight

Downstairs (nude/staircase) to the kitchen   

Naked to sit at the table (writing/thinking)

She might hear the washer spin like a full orchestra   

Complete a cycle like a train crash

Before the fiend would stare through the window   

Step smoothly into the kitchen, stop some clocks.

Envy shapes a fig tree in one’s breast,   

That is, bluntly to say, a cancer,

That is to say

In a mind, a fertile windy field. A murdered child.

Well then, fear, primarily of falling.   

Ebony surf toils on the beach, a glaze

At the same moment I am (from a cliff) falling   

The kitchen fiend removes his Dior tie

Places his hand over the woman’s   

And softly says: I am the lover.

Now if the crippled woman began to dance   

To pirouette, to rumba

Growling for her child

Her burning page, the devil would be shamed

(Materialism is not for everyone / Religion is   

The extension of politics by other means)

Would disembody like a wicked smoke   

Back to the status of myth

Away he’d streak, blue, into the—

O faun, we would finally call, farewell

O faun, we would faintly faintly call   

O faun, we would, we would fondly—

She does not dance. She does not wish   

To produce another’s pleasure.

They have torn her apart   

Into beige rectangles.

Alicia Ostriker, “Nude Descending” from The Little Space: Poems Selected and New, 1968-1998. Copyright © 1998 by Alicia Ostriker. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, upress.pitt.edu. Used by permission of University of Pittsburgh Press.

Source: The Little Space: Poems Selected and New 1968-1998 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998)