by Chloe Yelena Miller
This time I’m breast.
Face down, breasts hanging
as still as I could be.
I brought my breasts, body, here,
it feels like. I am not
exactly
my body today.
I remember choosing
dying in my sleep
during the childhood game,
as if we could predict or choose
that kind of ending.
I repeat
the soft animal of your body –
it hurts to forget the geese, Mary Oliver’s name,
to rest my middle on a plastic support,
even if covered with a towel.
In the waiting room,
I don’t think of Elizabeth Bishop
and the horrifying
breasts in the National Geographic
she read in another waiting room
as a child.
I am an adult, reading about park rangers
working with beavers to save the forests
through dams.
To trust an animal, to trust ourselves.
To trust that nature can be contained.
I am sure I will die of cancer.
Does this stave off the car accidents?
Chloe Yelena Miller is a writer and teacher living in Washington, D.C. She is the author of Perforated (2026) and Viable (2021), both published by Lily Poetry Review Books. Miller co-founded and co-directs Brown Bag Lit.