My doctor warns me not to stress,
not to strain, but already it’s too late,
that’s why I’m here
again, because of the blood
and the pain
and the way it interrupts dreams.
She says the colonoscopy was clean
aside from one small constellation
of internal hemorrhoids,
just a belated gift
of pregnancy but also
evidence that I’m not dying
yet, only mostly
miserable.
She calls my bowel
irritable.
She tells me to modify
my diet
again,
to breathe deeply
and a bit more often
and follow up in six months
if I continue bleeding
and crying
and not dying
yet
and isn’t it great how my body’s just
raising a red flag, giving me another crack
at softness, another crack
at the way life
shouldn’t be this hard because
it’s simple, really: all I need to do is
hold the world inside me
and then just
let it go.
