Post-Op (Poem)

Three showers after
my last fibroid removal,
my vagina still smelled clinical,
like freshly opened
Caucasian flesh-colored Band-Aids
with barely a whiff of
ordinarily sweet.

Scent is connected to memory…
if I can’t smell myself,
is she who I knew her to be,
or a sterilized version of me?

Two months ago,
before my last fibroid surgery,
a woman who survived a similar journey
told me to expect to feel a little insecure,
like something was missing
because I would be waking up
without property that belonged to me.
Today, I feel it—
the unfurnished cavern called “Uterus,”
groaning echoes of benign growths
that stifled my own.
An empty home.