Silence That Lives In My Bones

They called it necessary.

Life saving,

they said I was lucky.

I was reminded of how I should be grateful for the chance to live.

But the doctors didn’t tell me what else would die in the operating room.

They failed to mention,

how they’d take the illness

and with it,

my womb,

my chance,

my womanhood as I knew it.

They didn’t warn me about the silence that follows this type of procedure.

The kind of silence

that settles in your bones when your body is no longer home

just aftermath.

I was too young to hear the word

hysterectomy

spoken like a calling,

too young

to lose something I hadn’t even used yet.

I was too young,

to grieve children

who would never call me mother.

My belly healed in stitches, but the ache never left.

Some nights,

my hands press to the scar

like I’m trying to remember something

that was mine before it was cut away.

Nobody talks

about the shame,

or

the way people shift with pity

curled behind their eyes when you say

“I can’t have children.”

Or worse,

the questions.

As if my worth was a uterus they expected me to fight for.

And I did.

Shit, I fought.

I fought through appointments,

through the endless scans,

the cold metal tables.

And yet,

the word cancer

still came.

Wrapped in white coats

and forced smiles.

I fought for air

when grief sat on my chest.

I fought for joy

when the mirror said I was broken.

I’ve been angry,

so angry,

not just at the sickness,

but at the betrayal of my own body.

At time,

and biology.

I was angry

at the lost dream,

of holding someone who looked like me.

Angry that I wouldn’t be singing lullabies

I was angry that no one prepared me for how empty survival can feel.

Nobody writes about this kind of grief.

The one where you’re alive

but mourning the version of yourself that never got to exist.

Still,

I show up each morning.

not because I’m brave.

But because this grief has carved out a place inside me

that holds light as fiercely as it holds sorrow.

I laugh.

Not always easily,

but earnestly.

Because I know what it means to lose everything and still see light.

I am still learning how to carry this loss,

how to wear womanhood without a womb.

I have been brave enough,

to stand tall

even with a hollow inside me.

Even though some days,

it still feels like nothing will ever be okay.

But here I am.

Trying.

Still dreaming

of becoming something whole

in the aftermath of everything that was taken.