Depth Sounding

by Ella Jeffery

For many months I would lie

on tables in my lunch breaks,

covered in cotton or still

in my own trousers, my loafers

like taxidermized blackbirds

on the floor, while doctors

scanned my torso. Does it hurt

here, here, here, can you feel

it when you turn or sit or run?

I felt what I imagined as karst

or outcrop, something radiant

with its own internal logic

like a rose window or rolling

hitch, like a horseshoe crab

or snake orchid, complex and remote,

far from language. I no longer slept

on my side, thinking it might slide

or pull, dissolve or double.

This I omitted from my accounts.

It did not hurt or change.

Each week I corrected

my misspelled name on forms,

recalculated my age for accuracy’s

sake. In the surgeon’s lightbox

I saw what emerged: an ancient fish,

pale in the ultrasound’s black sea—

prehistoric, harmless,

and utterly alone. In pre-op

a nurse stropped her felt pen

on my bare thigh, marking

my right side as if my body

was their only guide.

What they took then I couldn’t say.

I woke and felt the same, but never

saw the scans again, dark and still

as water no light can reach.  

Who knows what depths

the body remembers, what it keeps

or discards while we sleep.