Meditation on My Right Breast in Stall Number Seven

How it sags under its own weight, 
so much bigger 
than the left. Asymmetric. 
I take it in my palm. 

Shake it a little. 
What’s inside? 
Microcalcifications.
A sack of marbles.

Maybe nothing. Probably 
nothing. Still,
there’s potential 
architectural distortion.

Could be a sign of—
“architectural distortion—
scared,” writes
Sarah2158. At sixty,

her breasts should not be 
getting thicker.
And Nightcrawler 
was just diagnosed 

with ductal carcinoma. 
Lately, I’ve been reading 
cancer threads 
on Reddit. Sometimes 

women post updates, 
sometimes not. 
You can never be sure 
who’s still alive 

by the time you read them.
And the X-rays 
of cancerous breasts? 
Translucent globes 

of streaming white 
threads cinched 
at the point of malignancy. 
Almost beautiful. 

I always wanted to be 
beautiful. I have always 
wanted too much. 
If I’m lucky today, 

I’m only lucky. 
It’s frailty that scares me,
the slow rot. 
Being spared long enough 

to watch while the ones 
we love the most 
suffer for reasons 
they cannot seem to explain.

---

Amanda Newell's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bellevue Literary Review, Gargoyle, North American Review, Rattle, and elsewhere. The recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and The Frost Place, she is Associate Editor for Special Features and Social Media for Plume. A resident of Frostburg, MD, she works as litigation director for a Washington, D.C.-based law firm and received her MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson's Program for Writers.