After I turned forty, I received my first 42 millirem dose of X-rays.
I heated the machine with my uncupped body, tabled my rib cage
to cool shoulders dear as a beloved relative who could no longer see
due to intraocular weather in her eyes. Women in an outer room
awaited bone scans. Backscatter is 5 microrems or .005 millirems.
A dental bitewing X-ray, around 0.5 millirem. Mammogram, 40 to 70.
Do not know about bone scans. Annual background radiation is 300,
higher if we live on a mesa or often fly. Ozone plus uranium decay,
daughters of radon gas.
How about our radiogenic thyroids, butterflies
shimmering with table-salt iodine? Peonies of bone marrow spun
rails of flesh in a waiting room of jacquard chairs,
of round mirrors and water lilies, paper hydrangeas, African violets.
If I broke the silence, then I drew the flame of your sun into my chest.
Unshielded, I entered an inner room to don a rose-colored cotton kimono.
For a minute, I thought of flying fish roe and forgot its Japanese name.
What is the risk of carcinogenic harm while estrogen acts on my cells?
Coralline of the radiology room inside my mouth, the clinical air
exuded an odor of magnolia powder although no one wore it, a scent
riper than radical scavengers of blackberries. I uttered a prayer
of radiolucence
then remembered the word, tobiko.
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