Insurance Approved
By Samantha Lucia
I said yes to permanence at 27
They called it ESSURE
They called it SAFE
Two metal coils
threaded
into fallopian tubes
like promises — like policy
market-vetted
APPROVED
No incisions
In-office procedure
Try coils
thrust raw
into tubes
unanesthetized
Women’s pain
thresholds
Twelve years of
my body screaming,
“STOP!”
And physicians saying,
“PROVE IT.”
The coils scarred over — created blockages
leaked nickel into unwilling tissue
Inflammation exploded
a language I couldn’t speak — but couldn’t stop speaking
A language of pain that
bent me,
bowed me,
made me small
Pain that doesn’t image—
So, they decide,
“You’re imagining.”
even after the
BLACK BOX
warning
even after they
PULLED it
from the
market
Physicians looked and declared,
“Essure doesn’t cause this.”
They KNEW
The market’s small print
had written itself into my organs
in allergy ink
Certified itself
in bedridden years of,
“We need a biological excuse.”
A woman’s pain isn’t valued enough
to remove its source
A woman’s suffering only matters
when it can be CODED
365 days
of merciless bleeding
My body performed its loudest proof —
its most monetizable symptom
Until the insurance surrendered to
a code it recognized
‘Murderous Coils’— NO
‘Diseased Uterus’— YES
INSURABLE
A hysterectomy at 39
becoming
algorithm-
legible
becoming
profitable
loss
The market sold me the device
The market cut it out
They logged it . . . TWICE
Samantha Lucia (she/her) is a queer poet and photographer living in the American South who writes from the archive of a body the record kept getting wrong. Her work has appeared in Corporeal, Poetries in English, MENACE, Witches Magazine, Twisted Tongue, Spellbinder, and January House, among others, and is forthcoming in the 1455 Books: Women Writers Anthology (2026). Follow her on Instagram @iamsamanthalulu.
Photo credit: Ittmust via a Creative Commons license.
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