I was young, strong, I’d prepared for nine months,
walking five miles a day, swimming in the Pacific,
floor exercises to strengthen my stomach muscles,
my thighs.  I ate liver and onions once a week, thick
protein shakes and raw vegetables, swallowed vitamins
dutifully, daily, with a glass of fresh juice — two slices
of unbuttered toast.  I’ve never been so disciplined since,
so in love with my body, so trusting.  I had a deep faith.
I’d believed what I’d heard: the body was a temple —
no metaphor — an actual temple, like the glittering
Mormon Temple born in the brushfire gold
of the San Diego hills.  My eyes were clear tide pools.
My hair a sleek eel in its coiled ponytail.  I had the legs
of a pink-toed, melon-calved lifeguard, my belly
an aquarium, taut and locked. So when the first pains came
I was elated, proud, as if I’d commanded them myself,
bore each one with a saint’s patience, lifting my head
like a prizefighter between bouts.  Then the real pain came —
sharp, unreasonably insistent, pressing  its glottal knuckles
into the small of my back.  Pain that wouldn’t stay
where I’d learned to contain it but raced along my ribs
and into my hips, digging its blue holes into the cartilage
between each wrenched apart joint, pistons firing
into the base of my brain.  I went crazy.  I couldn’t
concentrate on anything except the helplessness
spreading across my mother’s face, and when the pain
exploded and blew apart my spine I knew I was dying.
I pried my mouth open with my mind, begged for an answer:
Why had she lied? She’d said I’d be fine.  I’d believed her —
mother of seven — and now my beloved body breaking
open on the spoiled sheets. I thrashed and kicked my feet
like a demented child, wrested away from her grip
and threw up on her shoes. Then the cursing and spitting,
my hair seaweed, salty-slick, arms snapping open
like mandibles, all fingernails and teeth, heels
blunt axes bludgeoning the sheets.  It was wartime —
everyone scattered. Then a nurse came back
with a needle.  The others held me down.