Amy Ash
RORSCHACH
Today it’s a butterfly, the pattern of blood in the cup of my bra. Yesterday, a chrysalis, all purulence and grume. Last week, it was a constellation. A galaxy. Purple swirl of molecular clouds, collapsed. It is watery landscape, both archipelago and ocean, skerry and spume. Often it is a murky lake, edges rough and unwelcoming. I first thought it was a seahorse, dark creature caught in a net, but it must have been a mermaid. For so long, no one believed it was real. When the bleeding began last July, it was maybe a just a smudge. Who can remember that long ago? Fogged breath on a mirror. Edges undefined. Tuft of shrubs. A fleck of glossy red in field of brown, it is a sherd of pottery unearthed. It’s a flag. Hidden from the wind, it doesn’t wave, doesn’t waver. Through the heat of one summer and all of the next, my nipple opened into ulcer, kiss of blister. Months after the biopsy, still the imprint of lace and petal. Still, flowers blooming through bandage each day. Who will read its leaves, scry its storm cloud? A watchful eye, darkening. I know what I see.