What the Uterus Learned (1st place in our Women’s Writing Contest)

 The first doctor said never
 like it was a favor—
 a word placed carefully on the desk
 between us,
 paperweight,
 period.
 
 My uterus heard a statistic
 and mistook it for weather:
 low pressure,
 unreliable forecasts,
 a sky that refused to settle.
 
 He spoke in percentages.
 I carried them home
 in my mouth
 like copper coins—
 tongue-stained,
 too small to buy mercy.
 
 They called it endometriosis,
 a neat word for fire
 threaded through muscle,
 for pain that learned my calendar
 better than I did.
 
 My body did not believe in prophecy.
 It believed in labor.
 Sixteen times,
 it framed a room from bone and blood,
 hung hope like a bare bulb,
         then watched the ceiling
                     Bathroom tiles cold.
 Water running.
         Red blooming where it—
                         Again: framed a room
         hung hope like—
                 tiles cold
                         water running
         red blooming—
                 framed
                         tiles
         red—
                 again
                         again
 
 No names.
 No photographs.
 Just gravity
 doing what it does
         what it does
                     what it
 
 PATIENT HISTORY:
 Attempts: 16
 Outcomes: nonviable nonviable nonviable nonviable nonviable
                 nonviable nonviable nonviable nonviable nonviable
                 nonviable nonviable nonviable nonviable
 Probability of full-term pregnancy: <5%
 Recommendation: manage expectations
 [handwritten note, later crossed out]
 —unlikely but not impossible
     impossible
                 possible
 
 And still—
 cells gathered again,
 stubborn as weeds in cracked pavement.
 
 Twice, they stayed.
 Not miracles.
 Rebellions
 with pulse.
 
 Motherhood did not save me.
 It widened the field.
 
 Joy arrived carrying fear.
 Love learned how to ache
 without leaving.
 
 I learned survival
 does not erase grief—
 it moves beside it,
         inside it,
                     underneath it,
 learning the same air.
 
 
 Then: cancer.
 A word that enters the room
 already rearranging the furniture.
 
 Fluorescent lights.
 Paper gown open at the back.
 Ink bleeding through consent forms.
 
 Partial hyster          ectomy—
         as if partial means careful,
 as if subtraction
 doesn't redraw the—
                         They removed tissue.
 They did not remove—
 
         Femininity moved:
 into the throat
         where no learned to stand
                 no
                 no
                 no became its own grammar
 into the hands
 that learned to hold
         without disappearing
                 hold
                         hold even when
 into the ribs,
 where breath kept making
         room
                 room
                         room in the hollows
 
 My uterus learned
 that absence
 is not emptiness.
 Revival is not restoration.
 
 It is this:
 standing at the sink,
 morning light on my wrists,
 breathing steadily
 into a body
 that stayed—
         imperfect,
                     still here,
                                 still breathing.