Prayer to Rorschach

Taped to the ceiling of my gynecologist’s office directly above the exam table is an intricate cut-out of the Indian elephant-headed Ganesh, his nose a long slender penis seeming to indicate toward the stirrups into which the doctor gently lifts my feet, as though he were fitting me for Cinderella’s slipper and not preparing to insert a medieval torture device into my reproductive system. The speculum looks like the architectural drawing tools Professor Pinzer keeps on his desk in the English department. He plays with them as he talks—you’ll see if you visit him during office hours. They hold, as far as I can tell, no relevance to his current work on Nabokov’s lepidoptery, yet he likes to gesture with them for emphasis. If I could, I’d beg him: “Pin me down like a disembodied butterfly wing. Let me live in a shadowbox on your desk.” On your desk, beside that framed photo of two children, hands clasped together, spinning themselves in circles against a backdrop of dizzying autumn leaves. I have asked; they are not Professor Pinzer’s children. If this is a child and not just a late period, it won’t be his either. He’s not the one who deserves a bright red cheer- leading sweatshirt, a huge, nubby “A” emblazoned across the chest. My husband is a grad student, like me; he’s in Horticulture. For my birthday he gave me a purple Moth Orchid in full bloom. I killed it within a month and even he couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong, but I know: I pay attention to the wrong things. I lust inappropriately. I have too many arms. I pray for blood to bloom in my underpants like inkblots. I wish someone could read them, like Rorschach, and explain me to myself.