Do Not Ask for Metamorphosis

Margaret Wack

I know just how the flesh would carve open,
like a flower. It isn’t morbid. It’s merely practical.
I am not a physician but have practiced drawing
the knife from the clavicle down. Everything blooms
outward. Remove each organ lovingly and with precision.
The body a vessel. The baby a nesting doll. Blood
all the way down. Is it more difficult to sculpt
the body from flesh, from stone, from the more

malleable metals? Oh cold immaculate Aphrodite,
did it hurt to be born backwards, up out of the shining
wave-tossed sea, wreathed in incestuous foam?
How long did you spend scuttling and submerged
before you emerged virginal and glistening?
Carved from stubborn stone, every part
of you struck mercilessly until you became
beautiful? I am sick of such miraculous

transformation. I would rather be a laurel tree, slender
and beyond reproach. I am tired of the constant humming
of terrible desire. I am bewitched by my neck in the mirror,
the soft muscle. Where the hands would go. Where
the knife. Where the pearls. I am not a physician
but I know the cure for this: run the body like a sleek,
obedient dog until it stops running. Lowing and stung
ever onward. Fast and pray until a god appears to you

as a bird, the rain, the color blue. Pray that the egg
inside your abdomen is some exalted hero, born
already armored, hymns already snaking
through the syllables of their name. Do not ask
for doomed daughters. Do not ask for metamorphosis:
it is something that must come upon you unawares,
like a blow, like a kiss, like the moment
that you catch and burn.