We Called Her Uteri

I didn’t want children until they told me I couldn’t have them. It wasn’t an accident. It was not a sudden change. My insides were not gutted by a trolley car bar like Frida Khalo’s crash. It was not planned, like my aunt’s hysterectomy after she divorced my lazy bastard of an uncle. Always drunk, she said. Always drunk. And took a drag on her cigarette. No, this was a secret my body quietly harbored, a delicious prank it was playing on my consciousness. The grand reveal took place in the doctor’s office as I sat in the exam table in a gown three sizes too big for me.