To a Growth

  Nameless before the ultrasound, you lurk in my breast, a centimeter or so from the nipple, a pit lodged in a windpipe, all smoldering acorn quietness. I push down, trying to make out your contours—what is the size and shape of the weapon sprung and loaded, what is the weight of the stone in the snowball the young boy throws at another in Deptford, Ontario, hitting the pastor’s pregnant wife instead? Try not to worry, the doctor tells me, try to swallow these nails without scratching your throat, here’s a glass of water to wash them down, try to relax beneath the noose whose sinews I have just placed around your chipped porcelain neck. Knowing you are in there, but not knowing who you are, or what you will do to me. I turn over in bed, cupping your vessel, playing host to a guest in a ski mask. Perhaps the only thing to do is offer you tea and clean linens, caution you that the bathroom light’s gone out and you’ll have to use the lamp by the sink, ask you about your origins, how long you’ll be in town for. One day, on a busy street corner, we might see each other again, you’ll tell me how comfortable the sofa bed was, thank me for the hospitality, and I’ll laugh and say, It was nothing.