She learned what a goiter was when anxiety turned into one, a thick lump in her throat reminding her of a circle in its fullness taking up space between breaths. Obsession: a sphere she knew in truth was her esophagus, but she had stopped bleeding once a month, ate too many Miss Vickies’, never crossed yoga from her list and bathed at night so she wouldn’t have to face her dreams. She thought of her feet—imagined roots drawing them down in the typical fantasy of a grounding cliché. The nerves were sensitive—like eating a fish bone, how it sticks in your throat and leaves an imprint felt all day, nothing more, she thought, fearing esophageal cancer. The lump grew, snowballed so she couldn’t force out words and she lay on her bed like she’d had a stroke, and didn’t want to do any more. Word could be womb—the letter count was right, and her vocabulary shrinking with airflow. Poetry will save me, she thought, or journaling or a man (her ex wanted her back, so why not let him play the saviour and she the saved? But saviour was a synonym for martyr, and the saved was always a victim, one way or another.) She choked on the past, kept upward curves tucked safely in pharynx.
There’s no heroism here in the mundane, she decided, and threw herself far as a poem could take her, but it was only temporary respite— the blinding blur of a shooting star (another cliché)—and no amount of withdrawal unpoisoned her language.
Maybe she could have a baby she mused before remembering no menstruation equals no baby, maybe I’ll write a book, all the while the burping and retching and phlegm rising in her throat as she coughed in thinking to expel the lump like a hairball. Routes to freedom: meet the football player at the art gallery surprise him with wit and wardrobe. Come dressed as a sixties starlet all in white lace. Pretend you’re waiting for a gentle artist instead, batting Velcro lashes. See “V’s” as the silhouettes of seabirds, commas the graceful arc of dolphin spine, asterisks as baby stars. Baby. She hadn’t bought tampons in a year. What’s the word? The imagination is a vehicle for change the imagination is a vehicle for change the imagination is a vehicle for change she repeated like some Dorothy off in Oz, but the yellow brick road was crumbling worse than potholes in winter and directionless as her tongue in paralysis mouth. Like any tool, thoughts are what your hands mold lips mold teeth mold of it. On one side, art. On the other, hypochondria, and she was a full-blown nightmare in her not speaking for fear of cracking her voice like an icicle spear in winter and she had to sleep eventually but the bath water was hotter for longer and she knew she should sleep but if she did she might have to get up in the morning and if only she could bleed again it would all be alright. A third cliché right there—female energy as creative force.
She took a deep breath.
Visual by Amanda Lenko
