Diagnosis: Woman
“We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem.” — Douglas Adams
the surgeon sloshes me around tells me there is water trapped but this is normal all women experience this as the water leaks out my seams stains my clothes bright yellow at all my creases
he hold a crowbar between his white knuckles creaks at the hard core of me this is normal he shouts over the cacophony of rushing water and my screams hard steel finding a crack it leeches heat from my core splits me down my center this is normal
this is normal as i fall across the gurney a geode at my middle the last of my water dripping onto sterile tiles i cannot hold together anymore cannot will myself into one anymore
the surgeon sighs wipes his glasses on an edge of sleeve whispers this is normal
i am sent home with a stack of paperwork and some gauze tumble unevenly into a car across all the paperwork the words this is normal are written over and over
on the day of my post-op appointment i roll myself across town crookedly gauze caked in dirt and loose gravel all my slosh is gone as i try and try again to fit my irregular form into bus seats the driver impatiently tapping his wheel
i roll my jaggedness into the surgeon’s office then onto the examination table when the surgeon comes in he does not touch me writes this is normal onto the prescription pad tells me he wants to see how normal i will remain in four months
i return home take my normal pills roll myself raggedly through my normal life
tell myself in the night this is normal when i wake with a start
Tiffany Elliott’s Bones Awaiting the Blaze was awarded the 2022 Hillary Gravendyk Prize, and her work has appeared in Typehouse, Spectrum, and other journals. She is an asexual, neuroatypical, and disabled woman and mental health professional who received her MFA from New Mexico State University, where she was awarded the Mercedes De Los Jacob’s Thesis Prize. Her works explore the mythologies we experience, those we create for ourselves, issues of abuse and trauma, and how people can remake themselves.