The Moons of Neptune

^Triton

I bet my body for my body. My sex becomes medical waste.
Somewhere an insurance agent checks the paperwork.
Purple orchids, yellow orchids, gifts.
A machine vacuums blood from the surgical site.
When the chaplain discreetly comes out to me, I confess.
I ask the nurse on the night shift, “Is that the Moon?”

The night before, my mother texted “Sorry, no.”
I blocked her number. I told only one of my blood sisters.
When asked what I wanted for breakfast, I said rice.
I used a spirometer to keep my lungs from collapsing.
I regretted not meditating with the chaplain.
I was told no. I was told no. No one stayed but nurses.
My surgeon loved how the flowers grew.
Summer had passed and I bore a new weight.

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“This poem emerged out of a series of sonnets inspired by Triton, the largest moon of Neptune, within a longer series of sonnets about the fourteen known moons of Neptune. Triton orbits Neptune in retrograde, meaning it orbits in the opposite direction of the planet’s direction of rotation, and is the only large moon in the Solar System to do so. Triton may be a dwarf planet captured from the Kuiper Belt; such a capture would have perturbed the orbits of the other moons in the Neptunian system.”
—Như Xuân Nguyễn