Ethel

Ethel tells jokes so bad, she

adds “get it?” before slapping

her knee and wiping

the joy dripping off her face.

Ethel has scars criss-crossing her

legs from exploring the woods

with Charlotte the mastiff, reading “Little House”

on the u-shaped branch of her favorite tree.

Ethel makes world-class oatmeal raisin

cookies for all her friends, but only

in the fall when the air is crisp enough

for the cinnamon, nutmeg, clove.

While the tech rambles about strawberries

at Whole Foods, I squint between my stirrup-ed

feet at the ultrasound screen. The grey rabbit’s foot

on the edge of my uterus was not Ethel.

When the surgeon lasers my insides

free of adhesions and scar tissue, she

will remove the only thing my body

is fit to grow, a polyp we’ve named Francis.

And I’ll go home in post-partum panties

with painkillers and heating pads, curl

around the pregnancy pillow and pray this

time, this treatment, this surgery will work.

If I could’ve had a daughter,

I would’ve named her Ethel.

Rowe Carenen, a graduate of Salem College and the University of Southern Mississippi, work has appeared in Womanly Mag, The Revenant Culture,GERM, Terrible Orange Review, and Running with Water. She's published two collections: In the Meantime, Neverland Publishing, 2014, and First Drafts from the Brewery, Unsolicited Press, 2022. Her chapbook, Body of Work, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.