LADY DOCTOR

                    by Seema Yasmin 

lady doctor you say you want a lady doctor only a lady doctor can lift abaayah lower salwaar peer under kamees but you snatched the stethoscope out of your little girl's hand didn’t you? didn’t you say that’s your bhai's toy a boy's toy leave it let's go to the kitchen learn to fry okra before we stew okra that way we won’t eat slimy okra
                                        *

 
i was vexed slammed the kitchen door twelve year old girl with a penchant for electrons and using the ice cube tray to freeze different molarities of saline to find the lowest freezing point not to mince garlic green chilies into frozen cubes for speedy curry making to feed hungry doctor husband one day
 
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lady doctor you say to the receptionist and how can there be none? it is a women's health clinic how can there be none? none? in all the NHS there is none? and the tug in your uterus is so deep you say a man cannot go that deep cannot go so deep as a woman you say as i cringe behind you and the woman whose mother let her be a receptionist shrugs

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lady doctors begin age four with white coats and notepads and playmat diagnoses not age three with prayer mats and amulets conjuring devout children and maybe a husband who will take no more than two wives (that’s half the allotted amount be grateful)

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when it was time to apply to university you busied her with rishta go-sees circuit of nice young men some doctors! her ungrateful dream twitched next to aunties who said she was...lucky girl! unburdened girl! no exams no assignments like these modern girls that’s why her eyes were white like her skin no dark patches from worry no white hairs from thinking
 
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she wore her lipstick wonky for the rishtas like a tipsy drag queen not a good drag queen Rimmel London pillarbox red smeared across her front teeth she smiled a demented smile poured tea for the boys and aunty wobbling so tea spilled into saucer sized eyes that said Get out now. still they said she has delicate features she is gori eyes are hazel yes we'll take her. we'll take her. one uneducated girl so nice and pale and uneducated. unmarked by the Western ways spilled tea doesn’t matter as long as she doesn't talk back

does she?

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man doctor in the women’s clinic probes you with cold condom ultrasound strange to see ragged womb on plastic monitor my old home navigated by old dude your asbestos fingers gripping my knuckles as i say relax your breath says it has been years since someone was inside you since his eyes are on the screen fixated on your organs he misses your white lips and bulging cheeks
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i would have read your body better




in my fantasy





                    i wrap my mother’s prayers around my stethoscope





                                                                                                    wrap my stethoscope around my neck




listen to beating hearts and nobody




                                                            calls me lady doctor.


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photo by Paula Harrowing

​Seema Yasmin is a poet, doctor and journalist from London currently living in the U.S. She trained in medicine at the University of Cambridge and in journalism at the University of Toronto. Her poems appear in Coal Hill Review, Glass, Bateau, and Diode, among others. Her chapbook, For Filthy Women Who Worry About Disappointing God, won the Diode Editions chapbook ​contest and was published in 2017.