A Wild Surmise

Latin from the Mass

121 Latin from the Mass I Yesterday we laughed and said some Latin from the Mass, the Introibo and the end. Then I went off to work again after we held the little plastic cup to the light and lined the liquid up and wrote the figures down, your blood and something else flowing from your side. The video we watched about it, “Cleaning Your Drains,” called forth the wrong tone for the feeling, the horror of remembering a stranger with a spearlike scalpel slicing off your breast, leaving you nothing but the base of that small mound threaded with black, a little Gethsemani or was it Golgatha? Was it a crown of thorns that slipped like an empty bandolier across your breast? 122 We look through the opaque window of the bandage to the scar forming like a track over the wound won in a war, or was it just a raid? Was it just a truce you made? II Tonight the little plastic cup you held up was full of fluid, pink like cream in berry juice, like a morning rose or dull carnation. Tomorrow, if it goes well, the yellow tint will clear all the way up the tube to where it leaves your side and we will chart the numbers at the line. We will cry and laugh and slap our thighs. No more mass under your skin in mammogram, but one breast paid the price— that toss of dice 123 your cells played on you. I hold you while you shake the lotion, spread it on your newly forming skin and touch the final line, and touch the final line. ...