struck by lightning twice by twenty-four
this astronomical record was hers, Guinness proclaimed,
this lady so famed, top of her class at Stanford, then Yale Med,
and blissfully wed, to a surgeon who always came in second

this did not matter at Cabo, or even in their first condo  
but as her curriculum vitae grew faster than a Walmart receipt
on Black Friday, he scrubbed up for one bloodletting after another, removing appendixes, and appendages, feeling her shadow
grow heavy, even in the bright lights
of his operating theater

his first was, of course, a nurse, though at least her age
his second, a decade newer model, fixed his lattes at Starbucks
number three was the neighbor with whom they shared
nothing but a fence, and a few awkward stares

her hours in the lab with petri dishes grew, and  
she never let on she knew, that her clean shaven number two  
was lying with others to stand himself  

when he asked for a divorce--number four requiring more
than liquid exchanges in sweet hotel suites--she acquiesced and even let him have the Welsh Corgi, the cabin in Aspen,
and half the 401K

to this day, she recalls imagining his liaisons  
while she married menacing molecules to one another
in tubes under faithful light, seeking answers to questions
asked by the dying she would never meet
a lump would only grow in her throat    
if she thought his scalpel never sliced
the heart of number four, for five