After the Mammogram

Now that a pale algal smudge has been caught
in the net, faint against the black,
a letter arrives––more images needed––
and the words wake me as if I were a carp
dreaming of being hauled out
of the shadows under the lilies.
Chill, I tell the fish, it’s only
a call-back, probably nothing.
But someone has cast a stone over me,
ripples move across the surface,
erasing a view of the sky.

First published in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Winter, 2015.