by Kathryn Kirkpatrick

**Kathryn Kirkpatrick** · For the pain you are about to receive

Whoever built this machine

couldn’t love breasts.

I am between glass plates

and no one has performed the ritual

of asking the body’s forgiveness:

For the pain you are about to receive

Instead, it’s like the way

we slaughter animals.

When the nurse says they’ve found

a mass, my knees buckle.

We are strangers beneath bright lights.

Sonogram. Ultrasound. This room is darker

but I’m not convinced it’s for me

the lights are dimmed. Then I wait

for another stranger, a man

who has seen inside the soft tissue:

probably a scar in only 1% of such cases

does it turn out to be I am safe for the time

being as I’ll ever be unless it changes

in six months we’ll see you again

I might have told him

this is where the belt buckle

marked me when I was fourteen

or I know a man is dangerous

when I dream a woman with

a scar on her chest, female Parzival

in a wasteland.

But no one here wants to hear

and I don’t remember myself

until later, with my clothes on

when I recall my young breast

with the sear like a brand

my father made

I had not thought so deep.