Medusa

Where are you when I need you
to cast a glance on my ovaries?
Let me tell you a joke:
They call it the Ideas Portal,
as if the child is just an idea
or maybe your only ideas are children.
Anyway,
when I log into the fertility platform
to read the PDF describing frozen oocytes and embryos,
I think, how industrial:
consultation, medication, retrieval, cryopreservation,
cold storage, money back guarantee (if eligible);
how dazzling, what science can do.
But I can’t do it.
Can’t imagine going through the rigmarole,
my body or my pocketbook. I mean, I might,
if it didn’t cost $6,699 plus annual storage fees,
plus the price of stimulation drugs,
and other priceless things like time.
This is why I come to you. I’m not hip to science’s fluorescent
swatch book of possibilities.
I know it’s not the same: freezing a thing versus
turning it to stone.
But I might put my oocytes in limbo to try?
I mean, I’d rather roll the dice and hope for snake eyes,
than needle-anesthesia-dollar bill.
Can you please? I’d love to watch.
I’ll wear special glasses. It’ll be like a solar eclipse. I imagine
the whole thing only lasts a couple minutes, and it’s free
to receive the loving gaze of a measured mother, right?
Can you guarantee some measure, anyway? To avoid petrifying
the whole of me? I know this isn’t a real solution. It’s
just my imagination. An idea, from the portal. What?
The procedure is over? I see you handing me stones.