Fibroids

The body plagued by little bloodsuckers

They’ve always done my sonograms in tiny windowless rooms—warm and humid rooms with overhead lights they can dim so I don’t have to close my eyes when lying back. I think they save the bigger rooms for women who have someone with them. Technicians always speak in soothing tones, their practiced expressionless faces turned slightly away, focused on my insides rather than my external presentation. Not that I cry or anything — maybe a little sharp intake of breath as they push down on the bladder they make me keep full — because I’ve practiced my own expressionlessness, too.

It’s easier to wear dresses when you go, but no one tells you that before your first one. With a dress, there’s no wriggling my pants down and my shirt up while trying not to rip the paper on the table, no tucking the zipper of my jeans under the folds of my burgeoning belly without it scratching. With a dress, I can just pull it up over my waist (like that last time we had sex, when we couldn’t wait to undress, mutually desperate for that moment of ecstatic physical connection) and pull my stockings or underwear down, and, when it’s done (again, like that last time we fucked), wipe away the goo that’s left over and get on my way.

My last one was different, of course. Hung over after two days of post-breakup binge drinking, exhaling mezcal…