My fingers are folded into a fist pried 
open by prayer – a rose in bloom 
rupturing like my ovarian cyst.  

              I crush my birth control tablets 
              and pray to God for a better womb 
              whose sin is not shrouded in a cyst.  

This has made me quite religious –  
pain can save you from eternal doom  
so Eve bites hard into her fist.  

              Even all the prayers of a polytheist  
              end up addressed to the one who  
              heals – this is true even for a polycyst.  

I built a shrine at the gynecologist’s  
and a prayer is all but a waiting room. 
When I pray, my fingers fold into a fist.  

              My uterus is the playground of the capitalists,  
              clawing and crawling through my fallopian tubes.   
              The nurse draws my blood, folding my fingers into a fist –   
              the world caves into womb, rupturing like my ovarian cyst.