Unseen, Unspoken: A Poem For The Bad*ss Women Battling PCOS
People know that I am candid about the pain in my hips.
I cannot dance as hard as I used to without feeling a disastrous ache. Running exacerbates not just my knees, but my hips. Not to mention the overall tightness I feel in general. I try to do yoga, walk for thirty minutes, get some easy movement in… but the pain never leaves.
About five to six million women in the United States experience PCOS. Doctors prescribe weight loss pills, birth control, and other medications that influence hormones so that we can regulate our cycles and experience less harmful symptoms. Some women who do conceive experience difficult childbirth. For those who can’t, we get cystic acne, hair growth in unwanted places, and chronic pain.
I wrote this poem because despite the hormones raging against our desire to mother, we are still mothers. Some of us create ideas; others raise pets and animals. Because no matter what is happening underneath the surface, it cannot change what your heart has always wanted.
tender division
They all say, why not remove it?
Meaning: the eggs. The garden.
Meaning: the thing that may define
you as a human. The thing in which
turns pleasure into a creature.
Doubts pepper there and in my heart and
brain, telling me, please mother something
other than language. And what can I tell these
female organs but that I smother ideas better
than a living being? How can I look at those
sweet faces of babes and not cave into
a parental desire? Easy—I took my seeds,
turned them into pomegranates, planted them
in darkness, and watched them grow into trees,
shadows, glitter, animal, paper, ink. Tell me to not
divide. I’ll prove that I can still stitch one end of fabric
to a vague idea. Tell me that’s not art. Tell me,
I am not a real mother.
