In the mammography room, the chill
reminds me of the cold walks back
from the barn, everything tight

under a dark winter sky. Stars
as severe as the calcifications
on the scan. How beautiful, these

constellations that swirl atop tissue.
When the tech wilts the machine down
onto my breast, milk beads at the nipple,
drips onto the floor, forms a small white pool.

Weeks later I watch the garden of my body
shrivel back vines and vineyards, creeping
into the stale silence of a coming quiet.

I started pruning with a pixie cut,
my lopsided bangs, the curls that refused
my desires, lay on the floor, limp and leftover.

After chemo starts, I shave the luscious curls
of my mons pubis, the porcine pricks of my
underarms, the wildflower landscape of my legs.

Tell me, body, what spring smells like.
What summer offers. What autumn trims away.
I will listen to my breasts and when they are gone,

I will listen to the snow tap against the window,
and it will tell me its brief story of falling and I will
remember that in the beginning, as it will be
in the end, there was a tree. There was fruit.