Self Portrait in Surgical Gown with a Bouquet of Queen Anne’s Lace 

By Rebecca Hawkes

​                 

​Just as the doctors put me under,
                 the pretty anesthesiologist
                                warned me off riding bareback
 

until next time I bled. Too many meds
                 warring to rule the womb. My bed
                                 on wheels rolled itself toward the bright-lit room
 

I was to sleep in. Metal tang on chill air,
                 Comforting as any butcher shop. Honest bodies
                                 opened there like time-lapsed lilies.
 

I never got to see my own flesh bloom
                  before the knife. Closed my eyes
                                 on an inflorescence of surgical bulbs.
 

To receive so many strangers’ busy hands
                   I had to be bathed in multiplied light. Lucid umbel:
                                 an enormous head of Queen Anne’s Lace
 

beaming a hundred thousand lux. I drifted
                   in a reverie of old herbology. Morning-after teas
                                 brewed to test the reddened edge of bitterness—
 

just enough to shed the egg, but not so much
                   to bleed to death. While I slept, the doctors
                                 dug the tumor. They wrote a record of my breath
 

but never let me see the tuberous bulbs
                   plucked from my breast. Fat mandrakes
                                 with their taproots in my arteries. I woke
 

still thinking of wild carrots. Pale sprays
                   with hearts marked by bloody florets.
                                  Each droplet from the queen’s slipped needle
 

calling bees to royal business—sweet libations
                   nuzzled from the lace. Appearing by my bedside
                                   in blue veils, the nurses checked again
 

I understood: that nectar which for now
                    would stop my heaving, might later lead
                                   to unplanned morning sickness.
 

Miracle on miracle, the ways I may empty
                     my body and how it still finds means to fill itself
                                   despite me. I dutifully sipped
 

from cups they lifted to my lips. Rested
                     my lids and opened them, at last
                                    in my own room. This time I’d dreamt briefly
 

and of pleasure. My fingers gently pushing through
                     new stitches that were not yet sore. Toward
                                    the secret dark red flower flaring at my core.