Elegy for My Uterus

Your death began with a slow and steady leak.
Clots of decay sloughed off and slid down 
my legs like slugs searching for the next flower 
garden. I had heard the joke—can’t trust 
anything that bleeds and does not die—
but we were on day fifty-seven. I could no longer 
trust you not to betray me, so I lined the car seats 
with black trash bags, carried panties in my purse, 
purchased tampons in bulk
at Costco. Your invisible death 
rendered me a mystery  
of biological science, a walking, talking
enigma. They poked and prodded you, entire hands 
felt your dying walls, left fingerprints
and warm gooey blood-streaked slick sliding down 
my inner thighs. The day you died I asked 
if I could see you for a moment. I wanted to knead 
your shedding walls, poke holes in the fine membranes, 
wear you on my hand like a bloody condom 
and box in a knock-out fight, but they said no, 
and ushered you out of surgery in a hermetically sealed 
body bag. They wouldn’t even give me the ashes 
to spread around my begonias and lobelias. 
Now, I kneel in my garden and pluck slugs 
from my flowers and watch them sizzle as I salt.

Michelle Aucoin Wait is an MFA (Poetry) candidate at University of Nevada, Reno. Michelle’s  pronouns are she/her/hers/herself. Her work has appeared or will be appearing in Tiferet, Maudlin House, Lady/Liberty/Lit, LandLocked, The Meadow, Porkbelly Press, and others. She is a transplant from the Deep South and now resides beside a mountain with her family and her four yorkies.