Machine
Rachelle Dimenstein
Lying face down,
Cold capable hands position my
bare torso into unnatural angles.
Panic creeps in when I am told to hold still
and the treatment room’s lead door closes with a
dull thud.
I breathe in ragged spurts and take a deep shuddering breath
to calm myself.
I am alone in this chilly room with this belching machine
and my thoughts and my pain and my fear.
Moving into precisely calculated position,
it beams rays at the same flesh that once fed my
greedy open-mouthed babies.
These rays destroy the rogue cells, but also peel away healthy skin,
in onion layers,
until it is burnt and raw with angry blisters.
The machine quiets and adjusts its slant.
I close my eyes and imagine cells with sprawling tentacles
exploding in microscopic bursts of light.
The scar, still crimson and tender, marks the place where disease was scooped out
like seeds from a ripened summer melon.
Another pause and shift.
I am restless and want to move,
to run from this place, from my damaged hurting self,
from this hulking thing that is wrecking me bit by bit,
cell by cell.
My daughters are my fair skinned treasures-
one a young woman, tall and slender with green cat eyes,
the other still fresh-faced and innocent.
I fear that they may join me, as I have become a reluctant link
in this unwelcome unbroken woman-chain,
as my mother and grandmother before me.
Staccato beats overhead are
reminiscent of long ago summer drums,
when I danced carefree around that mountaintop bonfire
barefoot and utterly alive
while fiery tendrils kissed the night sky.
Rachelle Dimenstein
Lying face down,
Cold capable hands position my
bare torso into unnatural angles.
Panic creeps in when I am told to hold still
and the treatment room’s lead door closes with a
dull thud.
I breathe in ragged spurts and take a deep shuddering breath
to calm myself.
I am alone in this chilly room with this belching machine
and my thoughts and my pain and my fear.
Moving into precisely calculated position,
it beams rays at the same flesh that once fed my
greedy open-mouthed babies.
These rays destroy the rogue cells, but also peel away healthy skin,
in onion layers,
until it is burnt and raw with angry blisters.
The machine quiets and adjusts its slant.
I close my eyes and imagine cells with sprawling tentacles
exploding in microscopic bursts of light.
The scar, still crimson and tender, marks the place where disease was scooped out
like seeds from a ripened summer melon.
Another pause and shift.
I am restless and want to move,
to run from this place, from my damaged hurting self,
from this hulking thing that is wrecking me bit by bit,
cell by cell.
My daughters are my fair skinned treasures-
one a young woman, tall and slender with green cat eyes,
the other still fresh-faced and innocent.
I fear that they may join me, as I have become a reluctant link
in this unwelcome unbroken woman-chain,
as my mother and grandmother before me.
Staccato beats overhead are
reminiscent of long ago summer drums,
when I danced carefree around that mountaintop bonfire
barefoot and utterly alive
while fiery tendrils kissed the night sky.
