Dear Lord, I did not want to go to

effing Nineveh. But now here I am

in the belly of this whale called

University Hospital, realizing that you

don’t take no for an answer kindly

and can be a little shitty in your methodology.

They wanted me to shut up about

the herbicide in the river and how

the poison made the male frogs grow

ovaries filled with viable eggs (as the

four professors tried to explain), and I

did as I was told, sewing my mouth

shut with a child’s shoelace and a bit of

kitchen twine. And over time, when

neighbors started to get sick, and ovaries

and breasts and testicles were sacrifices

made in silence, each house  an isolated

pod of misery, still I kept quiet fearing

the rolled eye and because I wanted

to believe convenient lies about “bad genes

and lifestyle choices” and because

it wasn’t me. Yet. But I should have known

better, did know better, should have gone

where you asked, when you asked.

I should have shouted out the truth as I

am doing now and will keep doing,

though my single, hoarse, unheeded voice

can hardly hope to make it through

these fishy pounds of flesh, past  the

receptionist telling me to go sit down

with all the others, with the masses,

the millions, those whose lives have all

been swallowed, too, the millions who

will never, ever be spit out of here.