‘LETTER TO THE HYSTERECTOMIST’ / Ivana Brehas

Doctor I want you to scramble my eggs. Take my

fallopian tubes and knot them up like cherry stems. I

want to be barren. I want to choke my bloodline. Salt

the earth so nothing will ever grow there. I want to

only pee on sticks when I go camping. Doctor I want

you to make the pill a non-issue, abortion a non-

question. Make my body uninhabitable for anyone but

me. We’re full up. Out of room. Take me off the

stork’s delivery route. Make me hostile territory. No

man’s land. Carve me into an infertility statue. Doctor

I want you to install a No Vacancy sign in my uterus.

I want to be the place where sperm goes to die.

Ivana Brehas is a writer and filmmaker living on the unceded territory of Narrm (‘Melbourne’), Australia. You can contact her at www.ivanabrehas.com. ­

Cover image: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/1950s-mother--daughter-baking-a-cake-vintage-images.html?product=poster