It is a mound of muscle and fat, mine, transplanted, tunneled up beneath the skin and the wound is closed. Recovery is long. There is little that pushes through the pain at first. No spasm fierce enough, no scream louder than the memories marred into my brain. The new breast is warm, blood filled, alive- old flesh with a new purpose, but only part of the whole.
Sutures dissolve and scars fade with time.
We are more than statstics. One folds over in the black wind of a certain fate. She bends the line of ladies cut from the same song, attached by the tips of their disease. Breathe on one. The shudder moves along the row.