Melissa Joplin Higley
Body Astronomy
The first ink in the galaxy of my body
was a constellation of bright blue dots,
a small dipper of pin pricks orbiting the planet
of my right breast, marking radiotherapy’s
territory. Radiation followed mantle mining,
core samples tested, confirming aberrations,
the area cleaned and left mainly intact,
the crust barely disturbed. A second diagnosis
brought a second constellation—a little dipper
orbiting the left breast, mirroring its twin, added
to the sky of survival, but mastectomy replaced
radiation, leaving the blue stars floating
helpless against the milky sky. Excavation
cleared the left planet entirely, inner and outer
core and mantle, even mammillary magma,
leaving only a smooth, blank crust, rounded
by an artificial mound, like a plastic dome.
An X scored where a nipple should be, the skin
flaps stitched together to mirror the twin,
the protrusion posted like a flag, territory
reclaimed, and only then did this new land
look familiar. Over the blank crust, a star artist
mixed pigments of dusty rose with traces
of turquoise and loam and stretched the skin tight
between his fingers, 3,000 punctures per minute
swirling into a new areola—a red dwarf fused
in the dermis, shining through the epidermis, its gentle
luminosity a new Polaris, guiding me back.