Nutmeat, or Thoughts During Cervical Biopsy

Belly-up in a truck bed, I stared at you beside me,
our girl hands stained with black walnut husks:
thumbs pushed into nutmeat, into soft
huskfly maggots squirming in the kernel.
We didn’t mind. Their bodies were our bodies,
softened at the edges, certain parts growing bulbous
without permission. I think about the way
you scraped the meat from your fingernails—
nut and maggot, both—smooth twists I could only
call beautiful at fourteen. I think about it
all the time: when I turn the gas cap and unleaded
wonder slips down my leg, screwing a new
lightbulb in the kitchen to brighten the compost bin,
now as my gynecologist pushes in a cold tool
to pinch my cervix, removing some part of me
I didn’t know could be husked. Here: the inner walnut.
I have so much trust baring myself to be eaten—and God,
I want that. To be meat that’s approached delicately
and savored, meat you have to live in to fully enjoy.