Tonsillectomy

by Joan Mazza

Fifteen when she lets them
take her tonsils, she lies down, unafraid
when the uniformed man puts a mask
over her face and rests his heavy arm

across her chest. He adds the drops of ether
to the gauze and tells her to breathe
deep. He smiles at her before he disappears
in ether haze.

When she wakes, her body still vibrates.
In her dream, they ran down the hall,
pushing her gurney. So fast so fast.
Something wet,

like egg white, on the crotch of her panties.
Her mother, still talking, continuous stream
about not paying. She says she’s a widow.
“Don’t tell Daddy.”

Her throat burns for days. The stink of ether
lingers in her bedroom and her body, a scent
that will make her recoil, especially in the lab—
twenty years later,

wearing a white coat, when she sorts male
from female fruit flies, anesthetized
with ether for breeding.