~for Rachel~*

You don’t know what it means to feel my sense of absence. You don’t know what it
means to have this phantom cavity. You don’t know what it’s like to walk around with synthetic rubber pushing against where my left breast used to be.

You don’t stand in the closet looking at old bras. You don’t remember the orange one that you managed to bend the hook on. You don’t remember repairing it with a pair of needle-nose pliers while your reading glasses slipped down your face.

You never read the Hass poem, the one with the dead bees. You never guessed, but sending it to you was my way of saying goodbye, It was my way of telling you how your claws felt on my chest.