The nicest thing anyone said to me this week.

I am face down and ass up
on the radiation table,
my butt uncovered, exposed,
ready to be irradiated
while I stare down to darkness.

The radiologists pull
and push, give commands—move up some,
move back a tiny bit—trying
to align the target marks
tattooed on me with something

on the table or maybe
a laser grid projected
on my rump roast. I don’t know,
face pressed in doughnut pillow.
The radiologists, two

youngish women, maybe twenty-five
or thirty, one pretty pregnant,
stand on either side of me
and push me left and right.
“That looks good,” one says. “Yes, that

looks very good,” says the other.
And I am thinking that they
are talking about my moons
as the machine I can’t see
begins to hum and click.