Emily Elizabeth Buckley

‘pain associated with ovulation’

Part of me died on the doctor’s table

burnt away, scalpel cut,

I can feel it in the metal dish.

Flesh twitching beneath the surgeon’s knife,

abnormal lesions destroyed.

I wonder how she can do it,

cut someone else’s body,

but still blame their period,

instead of seeing the chronic illness.

She cut the endometriosis out of me.

Curling up around a heat pack

with pain erupting across my body

is now apparently a thing of the past,

who am I if not chronically ill?

They took my identity away from me,

in diagnoses and laparoscopic surgery.

I sit in pain still, but not as much,

and not for as long. But can I still

call myself ill if I’m not writhing

in pain, unable to see, or think.

Previously published: Rising Phoenix Review