"MRI 2" by Chloe Yelena Miller

This time I’m breast. Face down, breasts hanging as still as I could be. I brought my breasts, body, here, it feels like. I am not exactly my body today. I remember choosing dying in my sleep during the childhood game, as if we could predict or choose that kind of ending. I repeat the soft animal of your body – it hurts to forget the geese, Mary Oliver’s name, to rest my middle on a plastic support, even if covered with a towel. In the waiting room, I don’t think of Elizabeth Bishop and the horrifying breasts in the National Geographic she read in another waiting room as a child. I am an adult, reading about park rangers working with beavers to save the forests through dams. To trust an animal, to trust ourselves. To trust that nature can be contained. I am sure I will die of cancer. Does this stave off the car accidents? ————————————– Chloe Yelena Miller called us from Washington, DC. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems