Melissa Joplin Higley
MATHEMATICS OF WOMAN
Sometimes I feel like a catalog of parts—
single pieces valued more than the whole.
The whole value, really, lies in my pieces
behind my altered breasts, inside my ribs,
ribs that keep my breasts from altering my breath
that’s taken in to populate my blood with time.
My body was populated by pieces, in time, taken—
breast, ovaries, uterus, cervix—to preserve my life.
My parts, now preserved in lives of their own,
are no longer needed for the mathematics of woman.
Maybe, I no longer need my body to add up to woman,
no longer count on fertility, its remains discarded.
After the discarding, I count what remains—
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