percyst

by Taylor Swanner

Image credit: Hailey Kean on Unsplash

my thighs stick to the waxy paper, bladder swollen,

as the gel-smeared wand presses into the skin

of my abdomen, projecting filmy black and white

images onto a muted screen, the contents of my uterus

stuttering and blinking. they are searching for cysts,

polyps that colonize my insides. searching for deformities,

endometriosis, pcos abnormalities. i

like to think about how ‘polyp’ means baby jellyfish

as well as growth/tumor/cyst. i imagine

blobs of translucent blue and lavender coalescing within me,

moon jellies suctioned to my ovaries, blinking without

brains, hearts, or lungs, defense mechanisms built into their anatomy.

the nurse presses down on my right ovary and squints:

does this hurt? she asks. and i dont know how to tell her

that it always does

i click through websites while the jellyfish butt their heads against my sides and wrap their tendrils around my hips in the dark. the glow of my computer tells me that researchers found there are more studies done on male-pattern baldness than endometriosis, that it takes 7-10 years to get a diagnosis, that there is more data on the attractiveness of the patient than known cause of illness, that there are more case studies done on how the male partner is affected by the disease than how the patient is affected themselves

so the jellies and i curl on the bathroom floor and cry for receding hairlines and men who can no longer enjoy sex because the loves of their lives are in pain

they tell me that endometriosis can grow in any place in your body. your lungs, wrists, shoulders, your brain. they say it behaves like cancer. and i think of the jellyfish swimming around my skull, nestling into the grooves of my temporal lobe like a migraine, snuggling with my thoughts while they nest in my bladder, my bowels, my intestines. sometimes i feel more jellyfish than girl. more polyp than human

i keep track of the polyps movements on a pink app on my phone. it sends me notifications like “when to take a pregnancy test” and “irregular or pregnant?” and i dont have the heart to inform it that the only thing that will ever populate my uterus are jellyfish

the nurse asks: when was the first day of your last period?

and i shrug against the crinkly paper. i say:

december, and the polyps squirm. she nods.

it’s late march now. she says: come back

on the third day of your next period.

after you ovulate. when you're in pain. 

i press a palm to my middle and think of flooding

the jellies with 30 ounces of fluid just to be stabbed

with an unmagical wand for the fourth consecutive visit in a row.

somewhere, a sparkling serum promising to reverse

early male pattern baldness appears on another shelf,

as i mark another day on my pink app blank

and schedule my fourth ultrasound for when i predict

the jellyfish will sting

***

Taylor Swanner

Taylor Swanner is a Southwest Florida writer who still thinks of herself primarily as a Kentuckian. She writes about tulips, women’s health, February’s, and feminism. Her other works can be found in FGCU’s literary journal, the Mangrove Review, and the online literary magazine Anti-Heroin Chic.