The Marbled Sigh

Her Kind

After Anne Sexton’s “Her Kind”

“A woman like that is not a woman, quite.

I have been her kind.”

-Anne Sexton

I was a woman but am no longer one, quite.

I am now that kind.

They gutted me like a fish,

scooped out all my organs,

sent them off in a dish. 

It wasn’t like I was using them.

There was a fire sale of my tissue

a few lesions – cancerous –

gotten from human experience 

sexually earned and eschewed.

I was a woman but am no longer one, quite.

I am now that kind.

Mutagens and teratogens 

replaced plucked ovaries and estrogen

and what remained

threatened to be tumbleweeds.

Two years out,

birthdays and cancerversaries

I am not ashamed to survive.

I was a woman but am no longer one, quite.

I am now that kind.

I call it “the hissy fit”

I was temporarily out of my mind,

cancer-ridden and lockdown lonely

hospitals full of the pandemic dying

And news hot topic commentators debate

“What is a woman?”

all of the goddamn time

I was a woman and am no longer one, quite.

Sex will always fuck us over

the last generation unvaccinated 

at least I didn’t wind up a Barbie-doll

anatomically impossible 

and multiple ostom-ied

I was a woman but am no longer one, quite.

I am now that kind.

We read about healthy aging and menopause,

we learn to ask for hormone replacement

waking in recovery in chemopause fires

so sudden is the onset.

I did not write elegies for the lost parts

femininity/gender identity

things GenX HPV took from me-

so much –, too much, but not the heart.

I was supposed to be ashamed.

A martyr to alleged promiscuity 

my surgeon left all the good bits,

so screw you and false morality

I am a woman freed from biology.

I am now that kind.

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Pixie Bruner is an emerging writer, editor, and cervical cancer survivor and patient advocate. She lives in Atlanta, GA with her doppelgänger and the cats. Her poetry has been published in Space and Time Magazine and she has written for White Wolf Gaming Studio.