On My PCOS Diagnosis
by Stephanie Saywell

I pissed myself at a birthday party. I delighted 
in slammed doors. I bit my sister, threw up 
apple pie in the tub, sprayed a mouthful of milk 
over the kitchen table, stepped in dog shit 

and dragged my shoes across the back seat of the minivan.
In middle school my mother left a magazine on my bed, 
open to a spread of sports bras, so I purposely pulled
her fear of zippers up her fleece jacket to pinch 

the soft place between chin and throat. I reserved I love you
for when I wanted things. I crashed the car and shrugged off 
my father’s relief to see me standing on the curb. I made a promise: 
I would not spend my life disappointing anyone else.

I tell myself I’m giving a gift to someone who actually wants them, 
but really, it’s about the money. $45,000 for an egg donation, 
so I’m lying on my back, gooseflesh painful against 
paper gown, counting freckles on the nurse’s neck. She rotates 

the ultrasound dildo inside me while her eyes dart 
like spitballs across the screen, the lines in her forehead 
congregating like children around a dead toad. She pulls it out 
and I lie there, empty, until she returns with another nurse 

and a better poker face. They hand me tissues, first for the lube, 
and then the whole box. I step out onto 6th Avenue, unsexed, 
like a child standing on another’s shoulders pretending 
to be a woman with a long life and something 

to make of it.

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Stephanie Saywell (she/her/hers) is a queer, NYC-based choreographer, performer, and published poet. She holds two BAs (Dance & Written Arts) from Bard College and a Certificate of Completion from the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre's Professional Training Program. She has studied poetry under the tutelage of Megan Falley, Ann Lauterbach, and Michael Ives, and short fiction under Paul LaFarge. Her work has been published in Ink & Letters and Muzzle Magazine. www.stephaniesaywell.com