Before I even saw their perfect heads, the violent reds piercing, the petals together screwed
tightly in the dawn light as the sun tried to rouse us from our beds for another day of work,
before I could even change from my pajamas, my sleep bra, throw my wildly tangled hair
in a tie and walk outside, they’d all been disappeared by the deer, having caught
sight of their bright spotlights, beckoning them to slip their pearl-ringed muzzles beneath
the silk dress of night as they strutted the sidewalk, stumbling over each other
and into my front yard. No one was driving by and not even the dog barked when they crept
nearer to the window, bent their snouts beneath the thorns of the rose bush and ravaged
the ruddy blooms. I wonder what they tasted like or even if the deer desire them the way I
desired them, longing just to see them radiant and bobbing in the spring, made a little manic
by the pollen dust that swathed everything in its radioactive yellow. And too, I wanted to kneel
beside them and wonder into their cores, my whole face where only the fat bumblebees had
once rested, drunk on nectar, drunk on the taste of fleshy tulips in springtime. I wanted what I
wanted but what the deer got to first. Like on the operating table, after slicing into my
abdomen, after the frozen sections came back negative, the surgeon reluctantly followed
my orders, taking only what had to be taken, in order to spare me my cervix. We’d reviewed
a list of options together the night before, having a sort of three-way with his girlfriend who
was booking a cruise for them, we were all on speaker, I on the other line telling him
that I wasn’t willing to give up my orgasm if I didn’t have to, and when we were finished giving
our reasons, he said the same thing to both of us at the same time: whatever you want,
just book it. I was so impressed by his multi-tasking (I listened patiently as he read out his credit
card number, expiration date, cvv code), and even by how he treated our desires more
like ambitions than inevitabilities, like the way I feel about the tulips once I spy them beginning
to swell, knowing I’ll never see their flushed double ruby cups unfurl, the deer so
much like destiny returning to my doorstep, the way they are always hungry to devour things
down, to take what they want and make no apology. But a girl can dream! And after the
surgeon followed our best-case scenario and left me with as much as he could leave me with
given the tangled field of wildflowers he’d found inside, having pulled everything rotten
right through the midriff hole we decided we’d make, he used glue to seal my stomach back
together, to force the threads of my muscles into recoupling. I think they’re still working it out.
The scar fading. The wound beneath still tender. I might always be tender. And it lets me know
it’s there–my decision, my desire, which sometimes feels silly and selfish and meaningless,
especially when after a long morning run having pushed myself a little too hard, the severed
muscles clench like they’re wringing out the rag of me, twisting me into the ground, down next
to the empty tulip stems erupted, their two dejected leaves flopped against the black mulch on
either side, their soft juicy green smooth and striated, where I say out loud to them that
I chose this, as if they care, and also that I chose to sleep through the cold spring night when the
deer came to my door and smashed their faces greedily into all the terracotta pots,
their hooves clicking on the concrete, tongues licking the insides of the cans collecting rain,
the way the cervix might receive forgiveness for its crime of wanting to remain,
for trying to rouse me in the night to watch the rangale in the act, or to save the tulips
the way I saved the measure of me I knew I’d always want later, if there was a later.
I’d always want later, wouldn’t I? Even if later is only next spring or just
the next after next. Like the tulips–perennial. For however long it was, I’d want that.
