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Prayer of Radiolucence

04/28/2026 14:58h
After I turned forty, I received my first 42 millirem dose of X-rays. I heated the machine with my uncupped body, tabled my rib cage to cool shoulders dear as a beloved relative who could no longer see due to intraocular weather in her eyes. Women in an outer room awaited bone scans. Backscatter is 5 microrems or .005 millirems. A dental bitewing X-ray, around 0.5 millirem. Mammogram, 40 to 70. Do not know about bone scans. Annual background radiation is 300, higher if we live on a mesa or often fly. Ozone plus uranium decay, daughters of radon gas. How about our radiogenic thyroids, butterflies shimmering with table-salt iodine? Peonies of  bone marrow spun rails of flesh in a waiting room of  jacquard chairs, of  round mirrors and water lilies, paper hydrangeas, African violets. If  I broke the silence, then I drew the flame of  your sun into my chest. Unshielded, I entered an inner room to don a rose-colored cotton kimono. For a minute, I thought of  flying fish roe and forgot its  Japanese name. What is the risk of carcinogenic harm while estrogen acts on my cells? Coralline of  the radiology room inside my mouth, the clinical air exuded an odor of magnolia powder although no one wore it, a scent riper than radical scavengers of  blackberries. I uttered a prayer of radiolucence then remembered the word,tobiko.