Elisabeth Preston-Hsu

A HINGED DOUBLE SONNET FOR MY LAPAROSCOPY, AUGUST 1, 2023

That desire, tools to scrape out pelvic pain,
as if that would cure. It’s not that simple.

For twenty years I’ve stretched across hardwood
and exam tables, dry needled, joints moved,

exercises repeated. So many trials
but to end up being dug through anyway.

Iodine smells like licorice. I’m now
in an OR draped, drifting in a field

of blue poppies. I invite the harpoon
three times, my umbilicus as entry,

an eye. Breaths ventilate and fill my lungs
while fluids run into veins. I’m glassy,

filling with estuary and skyline.
Hope does not forget and watches with me.

Hope does not forget and watches with me,
for the cottage on the coast, a welter

of pine where sand eases itself away,
margins of rocks burnt with orange lichen,

hope up on her haunches, cautious and slow.
One-eyed creatures burrow and snip, anchors

release burls of scar and seaweed adhered.
Uterus pink, round ligaments beaded

with peritoneal inclusion cysts. Wait
with limpets in a tidepool. Wait on top

of sand dunes. Wait where iodine darkens
the sky. Wait with hope in this injured land.

Wait to find pain still turning there, tugged to
a tense breath when strummed, my asymmetry.

I’m a mouth, waiting to know if I’m wrong.