that my husband was never
a breast man; that I was wasted
on him, my stepfather once joked;
that the doctor can make nipples
of scar tissue, though they flatten
over time, or do not take at all;
that the lady can airbrush color
on my areolas, though she warns
against the deeper pinks, as I’m
getting older; that I’m getting older;
that there are calcium pills
to counteract the pills that leach
the calcium from my bones,
and other pills, and others,
and the cold water, too,
with which I swallow it all down.
Nicole Callihan writes poems and stories. Her books include SuperLoop and the poetry chapbooks: A Study in Spring (with Zoë Ryder White, 2015), The Deeply Flawed Human (2016), Downtown (2017), Aging (2018), and ELSEWHERE (with Zoë Ryder White, 2020). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House, Kenyon Review, Colorado Review, Conduit, The American Poetry Review, and as a Poem-a-Day selection from the Academy of American Poets. Find out more at nicolecallihan.com.
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