When My Doctor Sliced Me Open and Filled My Femur With Sea Coral
Bianca Grace
I was lower
than the bottom of the ocean when my disfigurement destructed the skin above your tiny, ten-year-old femur. You were certain the doctor was a monstrous iceberg when he birthed and stitched me up. I am the scar that stopped you from wearing a swimsuit at the beach because I carved ugly into your veins and arteries. Mini shorts at school were forbidden in case a student jeered louder than a dolphin if I crept beneath your hem. So careless. Your family would exhibit me, prouder than a gold medal won at a surfing competition and it would make you feel like vomiting over every person who made you go into another room to look at me because you did not have the power to say no. But one day you found a pearl. Beneath me lived the Great Barrier Reef. The murky bone devastated by the belligerent tumor transformed into mysterious jagged sea coral from the ocean’s shallow waters. You envisaged creatures swimming inside your femur working to create a home for their offspring. I was no longer the tsunami of hate you were certain would ruin your life. You were free from the storm you had no choice to weather. |