by Amanda Newell

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.

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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.