Five.
There’s a lump on my breast that I haven’t told the doctor about.
I told my mum, and she said it was probably fine, so it’s probably
fine, even if my friends tell me to stop chancing it and see a specialist.
Sometimes I try to pop it like a blister or a spot, but it just stings
and then Google tells me that cancer is more of a dull ache, so it’s fine.

Four.
I threw up violently in the bathroom and then my heart felt heavy.
Ignoring the obvious irony of ‘heavy’, I could describe it as:
tight, aching, dull, wheezing, like a fist clenched right around it.
Convincing myself that I was having an elongated, stretched-out
heart attack, I took myself to the hospital.
They gave me acid reflux pills.

Three.
When I was seventeen, I was as seventeen as a seventeen year old can get.
That is to say, my problems were both numerous and the end of the world.
So it surprised exactly nobody, least of all the police officers that were called,
when I took a scalpel and tried to perform surgery on myself. Yeah —
that happened. But at least I got to ride in a police car
on the way to tell the crisis team that everything was really okay, I promise.

Two.
Osteoporosis runs in my family. Like the lamest curse that can possibly
be passed down through female lineage, it’s a given truth that one day,
my bones will become brittle and break. To this day, I haven’t lost my bone-
breaking virginity, and I personally think it ***** to be twenty-one
and have never had the opportunity to get a cast signed. I drink a lot of milk.

One.
To this day, I have a fear of home invasion. I suppose I’m more attuned
to the house-settling noises of being alone. If I’ve made a habit of ignoring
all my own bone creaks, they’ll start popping up in other places.
Like knocking on a door that’s already open. Like the way the bed creaks
when I turn over. Like checking the locks when something is already inside.