PERSON Poem: Cesarean Story I, by Mayzie Sattler

a chainsaw was medical
before it was used for lumber,
widening and chewing through
a mother’s pelvis
in an effort to guide her
child out.

this was safer, somehow,
than a cesarean section,
which were rarely successful
before anesthesia and proper
hygiene and yet,
a century after the retirement
of the chainsaw and generations
of medical advances
they still
almost killed my mother.

my temples throb
and temperature rises thinking
of her returning
every day for a
week in searing pain,
hallucinating and
fainting in the lobby
after the smelling salts
roused her, they sent
her home.
my breath retreats
and shakes my spine thinking
of them
scraping
out infection, and the
sponge they left
inside her weeks ago
without time for anesthesia,
newborn Lilia
somehow sleeping peace

fully through her screams.
generations of medical
advances for moments
like this.

lilies were sent to her
room in pungent waves of ginger,
gold and white
sickening her
in a morphine haze.
they were moved but
she could still smell them
across the hall. lilies
are now forbidden
from entering the house.