I wake up to a new pain between my knuckles and wrist. It seems a bone is growing from the bones in between.

I pull the blinds, September light baffles me. There's stuff piled up in my yard: insect treatment signs, a rag doll, plastic cups and a lengthening shadow of the oak. I haven't been out there for weeks. I look at my hand and press the place where it hurts the most. It's a bone, definitely a bone. I touch it, rub it and try to make sense of what's blooming beneath my skin. I've conceived a bone.

I find a pair of mittens. Then I get a trash bag and head to the sun-swallowed yard. The wind whips my bangs, penetrates my robe. I collect the debris and sit under the limbs of the old tree, watch the jet streams in the sky, imagine the planes slipping into the runway, weary and empty after a long flight. Perhaps it's my diet, I turned vegan a few months ago. I pull the mitten, suspend my hand in sunlight. The bump looks bigger. I draw a dotted line between my hand and the jet several thousand feet above it.

The thoughts of X Ray, MRI crisscross in my mind. The rooms with giant machines lighting the body, detecting the diseases. Everyone who walks in looks sick. I think of going to Panditji, the known clairvoyant in our community. Maybe the tarot card will say that this bone is a sign of good fortune and health.

There is a cloud above my head, resembling the shape of a vulva. I can make a song out of it. What if I'm going to die? I've never had a threesome; I've never touched another girl. Never stolen. Never pregnant. I've always thought I had plenty of time.

I pick up the trash bag and walk past the screen door as if nothing has happened. As if I am in another universe. There's laundry. Unanswered emails and dirty dishes.  I hope by the time I'm done with the day's work, the bone will miraculously disappear, if not today then tomorrow or the day after. Or it may grow. Bulbous with tiny bones sprouting from it, become another palm that'll cover my eyes in broad daylight. Come lunchtime, it'll open like a mouth. When I sleep, it'll cast a shadow on the wall, slam the headboard at the sight of every nightmare.