Biopsy.

"Biopsy," the word cut through the static of the phone like a plow clearing snow. "When?" I asked. My doctor transferred the call to her receptionist, and the appointment was scheduled for the next morning. I "lit up like a Christmas tree," and as a child unable to choose from all those gifts, the gynecologist insisted on taking three. 

And suddenly, in the silence of my life, that great Light, God, that all seeing eye, gazed through those hidden folds and crevices of my femininity and upon the mouth of my womb. And I was but a specimen, lying still upon the table, to be examined and sampled.

I had no breath to cry out, "Why!?" I was not Jonah running from fate. I was the great whale, and I swallowed up that great Divine Light.

And it burned.