After the Biopsy

She weighs her joy and finds it wanting,
a body is a conundrum of betrayals—
how easily we forget that the nail
gently brushing a nipple sends light—
oh, the bright light of the world
piercing through our bodies, spreading
the irritable sweetness of delight
and needle pricks, but now, cupped,
her breasts, she knows, carry the weight
of all fears; and the nipples have grown
into wounds, this alarm of milk
turned into a warning of what used to be pleasure.
These days it is hard not to know
that we grow used to our truest
selves, that left alone, untouched,
the body returns to a native smell,
the smell of earth, of decay,
of corruption, and this is the sublime
meaning of faith. We wait
for the conductor of our last days
to arrive, in a lab coat and with hands
smelling of antiseptic creams.
No one has to prophesy death,
the bones pushing against the skin
are the portent of all ends.
We become the memory of substance.
Here is where they say her end
begins, this purple spot, this complex
of dark veins and stone-hard flesh,
his abuse, this intrusion. Her fingers
have grown used to the rise
and roll of a tiny pebble
under the skin. She is playing
with her unmaking. The doctor
offers to remove it all, to take
away the weight of her old pleasure,
to flatten the ground she walks on,
and only then, cupping these ordinary things,
does she begin to weep, her body
warming with the confusing
and overwhelming wash
that she cannot quiet. This is
the shame and pleasure of the song
of loss and the passing of light.