The Chronic Inflammatory Disease, Endometriosis, Talks Back

The Chronic Inflammatory Disease, Endometriosis, Talks Back Dawn Manning (bio) We ghosts grow close as second skin.No ultrasound or CAT scan can trace our figurations—no, no, my sweet, my succulent. They'll have to cut you opento believe you. Stripped of your birthday suit, they'll rank youfor our inner beauty—our size and number, the particularsof our appearance, and our favorite hangouts, especiallythe scar tissue and adhesions (which they'll leave more ofin the wake of their prodding). We feed with slippery fingers.Mostly in the abdomen. But we love to feel our way alongthe line of your limbs, and your bronchioles. We love the curveof your bladder—lichen its walls with powder burns, blood blisters—swelling and contracting so there's no relieving yourself, onlylabor pains, contractions that leave you unconscious on the cold tilesof the bathroom floor without a pesky baby at the end of the pain.We've left fluid in the paracardial sac wombing your heart as a tokenof appreciation. It'll go unwitnessed until we're so inflamedwe crush the meat of you. You're the offal of our desire. End Page 100 Dawn Manning Dawn Manning is the author of Postcards from the Dead Letter Office. Honors for her work include the Beullah Rose Poetry Prize, the San Miguel Writers' Poetry Prize, the Edith Garlow Poetry Prize, and being named a Mona Van Duyn Scholar at the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Her poems have appeared in 32 Poems, Ecotone, Prairie Schooner, and other literary journals. She resides in the former tollhouse of a covered bridge where she writes, consults, conjures, and metalsmiths. Find her at dawnmanning.com. Copyright © 2024 Pleiades and Pleiades Press