Volume 13

Use latex gloves.
Use a scalpel.
Brain slices up like Jell-O.
Use tweezers to grab the hair-like strand of cranial nerve VII on the ventral brain stem.
Nerve VII controls facial expression, such as your furrowed brow yesterday when the honey-haired boy ended with “but I really enjoy spending time with you.”
Use ventilated rooms to keep from gagging on formaldehyde.
Use labels: pons, vermis, amygdala, thalamus.
Use a new playlist.
Nothing to remind you of swaying together while the notes warmed your bones to honey.
Use your fingers to peel off dura mater.
Use concealer.
Use labels: eyes, mouth, hip, hands, skin.
Use sagittal cuts.
Remember that sagittal sounds like spaghetti, so a sagittal cut from brain to toes would make long strips of human lasagna.
Use a cookie tray to catch the brain juice.
Use scientific objectivity.
This brain is no longer a sheep chewing long grass. The music of his hand on your jaw was just the opening and shutting of ion channels.
Use a scalpel to flay open summer nights and long pauses.
Use the biohazard bin for brain matter.
Use hand sanitizer.

Hallway Disclosures                                 Doorknob Disclosures
Oh,
oh,                                                            Ah,
oh, oh,                                                                       hmm.
let’s talk in here                                  Let’s pick up there
about that.                                                  next week.

 

“My heart is crying blood for my city and my people”

Seventy-six years and three passports later…

Here I am, watching the unthinkable unfold before me,

So far, yet so close

We took an eastward turn,

The opposite direction would come to see

Mothers preoccupied not by nesting

And adorning a nursery for new life

But by inscribing their children’s names in marker

On fragile arms and legs.

We are forced to bear witness.

“Shifa” should mean healing

Not a press conference held by doctors waiting to be taken captive

Sheltering from tank shells in the oncology ward

Begging for a ceasefire

Begging to permit aid to arrive from the south

WHO BOMBS A HOSPITAL??

Bisan informs us daily that she is still alive

But who knew that beneath a hospital whose namesake means healing

Three mass graves would be uncovered

All that would identify these souls

Would be zip tied hands and white coats

Shrapnel wounds and stethoscopes

A surgical theatre was intolerable to the occupiers

Arab blood they didn’t put there themselves

Here I am, At an institution in the heart of the empire

An institution where I learned the phrase

Do No Harm

Declares a student encampment more repulsive

Than mass graves under a hospital

A new medical acronym:

(Code watermelon)

(Code red, white, black, and green)

Wounded Child, No Surviving Family

How many audiences at the Hague

How many UN resolutions

Will it take

To convince them that Arabs bleed?

Scrub, wash, and cleanse of all impurities
Before disturbing the sacred chamber.
Enter, don the vestment. Put them at ease
on the table, waiting for their slumber.

So started ritual interventions.
Prepared, faithful clergy gathers around,
Laity waits, with hopeful intentions.
Vulnerability and trust abound.

Sanctified, the sacrament has begun.
Here in this intimate, blessed moment,
Litany recited, solemnly sung.
Prayers whispered, healing is our proponent.

All things are ready, even the foley
The surgery begins, it is holy

Sunday
“He has metastatic cancer”
“He doesn’t have long”
That doesn’t make sense
I saw him 2 months ago
He didn’t look sick
I can’t sleep

Monday
The lecture is on cancer spread
Was his hematologic? lymphatic?
I unsuspend anki cards
it doesn’t matter
His cancer is everywhere
I wipe away tears

Tuesday
Chemo drugs
I struggle to learn
Doxorubicin, cisplatin, cyclophosphamide—
Which concoction will he be prescribed
Regardless, the side effects will be awful

Wednesday
We learn the pulmonary exam
Did they listen to his lungs?
I tell my patient, “take a deep breath”
Can you hear cancer on auscultation?
I smile and say “your lungs sound healthy”
I wish his did too

Thursday
In lab we look at lung mets
My classmate pokes the lung,
squeals, “eww its squishy”
I feel like throwing up
That’s what his lungs look like

Friday
Lunchtime session on SPIKES—
how to deliver bad news
I wonder how he reacted
Did he cry?
Did they give him space to cry?

Saturday
I’m exhausted, can’t fall asleep
I hope he has a good doctor
I hope I’ll be a good doctor

She waited, years on years,
A thousand names on the transplant list,
Her body, a fragile thing,
Told her heart, wait—just wait a little longer.
Tangled in wires, endless hours
Whispered prayers of hopes and fears
Loved ones, now mere bystanders
Wait as time stretches thin.

Then a call came through, at last, at last—
“A miracle!” Doctors exclaimed.
A match! A gift! A second chance!
She, so filled with sweet gratitude,
Could not believe the chance was hers,
The life she’d lost, now in her grasp.

But gifts, it seems, have fragile threads,
Organ rejection— doctors say,
With careful eyes and faces meek.
The phrase slices through the air
The organ that had once been grace,
Now fights to leave, to find its place.
Yet in the loss, her heart still beats
A stubborn, fighting rhythm
Now an organ present, yet a life unsaved

You didn’t know that day.
That day would be the last time you’d see the sunrise with your own eyes.
That day would be the last time you’d feel the wind caress your face.
That day would be the last time you’d smell the fading life of the falling leaves.
That day would be the last time you’d hear the songbirds outside the bedroom window you always left open.

Your house was your palace, you’d say with a warm smile.
A palace built with two sets of hands, livened with the laughter of little ones who grew up so fast, in the blink of an eye.
The walls towering above you now linger like ghosts, breathing hollow despite efforts to resurrect their emptiness.
Through the window, the sun paints the world with its heavenly hues, but its warmth melts away all too quickly.
It smells clean, too clean, and the songbirds are replaced with the chatter of endless beeping, dripping, and discussions.

Your hands reach outside the confines of your bed, searching for your lifeline to any remnants of normalcy.
You find it in familiar, smiling faces, giggles and songs from your littlest ones, and time reminiscing over long-lost tales.
In those precious hours, your world becomes larger, life expanding beyond the four walls of your new dwelling.
And just for a moment, the hourglass seems to stop, and the sand slipping through your fingers pauses in its escape.
After all, no medicine could replace the panacea of creating memories with your loved ones.

However, Time is a cruel mistress, and she marches onward, taking and taking and taking until nothing is left.
The pain increasingly gnaws at your insides, and the corners of your vision flicker as reality merges into the unknown.
You’ve never been here before, you realize, and your body can’t help but obediently march behind Time’s fleeting figure.
Your desire for food begins to fade, and nothing can satiate the cold seeping into your bones.
Your lips, once alight with quick quips and wise warnings, feel like they can hardly move.

The world is quickly fading from your sight; yet you reach out to grasp the hem of Time’s garment.
You catch a glimpse of the void beyond her figure, and there’s something-no, someone in the distance.
Your feeble fingers grip tighter, not out of fear, but out of your humanity. Not yet.
The figure in the distance moves, albeit slowly, always united with the horizon.
Their identity eludes you but somehow, somewhere, you know them.

You can hear the hushed murmurs around you during the instances you’re awake, though they’re increasingly fleeting.
Time continues to move despite your resistance, and soon you can’t move, caught in her web of sleep.
The figure on the horizon becomes clearer, and somehow, you know that your journey is ending.
Worn hands capture yours, and you can’t deny seeing the kindest eyes you’ve known in your life.
It’s been many years since you’ve seen those eyes, but you’d recognize them any day.

You stir with a start in a moment of clarity. The monitors are ever present in their synchronized symphony.
You savor one more glance around your room, one more look at your family beside you, one more whisper to them.
You hear their comforting voices as you slip underneath the waves of consciousness one last time.
You take the kind figure’s hand. Your heart rate, blood pressure, and respirations ebb and flow in your final aria.
It’s time, my dear. Let’s go. Together.

I found an old polaroid
of my mother
lying in a hospital bed
holding her pregnant belly
in eager arms—
happy,
unafraid

today
women queue for IUDs
like wartime rations for
milk or beans—
our anticipation of
motherhood
traded for fear,
unsure if we are allowed
to be prioritized,
or simply kept alive
in bodies and blood
that already betray

our silent threats
atony
previa
rupture
as natural as pollen on bees:
weights
that carry
death’s cruel sentence—
now heavier
by law’s decrees,
ensuring that
hospital beds
remain empty

My cheeks hurt
“Definitely”
Stay alert
“Absolutely”
Crispy cream glazed over.
me- The research was for a rover
them- Did you find ET?
me- Not yet, we shall see
I’m special spacial special
We win races races races
Publication chasers
Networking embracers
Obligatory acers 

-stop. slow down. 

-no, I might drown!

Squeaky clean fingers
Scrambling up the rank latter
Lactated ringers
In my tea with the mad hatter
Program egos, make them fatter
Put through the ringer
But it’s all that matters  

Ring the bells, match is nigh
March madness, match sadness?
Careful chatter
It’s ride or cry
Wishing to wash my hands of SOAP  

Do I buy…
a dress?
Will I jinx it?
No, I’d rather believe there is hope
In that 10AM envelope.  

We’re all in the hospital, torn
Grandma is here, torn away from the thanksgiving dinner she hosts
Dad is here, torn away from his son’s Saturday morning baseball game Nephew is here, torn away from his breakfast as he awaits surgery
We call them ‘Mr.’ or ‘Mrs.’ instead of the loving ‘mom’, ‘dad’, ‘son’
And I feel torn too
Torn away from my grandma’s thanksgiving dinner
Torn away from a nephew’s first steps
Torn away from morning kitchen smells and waking up slow on a rainy morning
Here we all are, a part of this torn tapestry
“I’m still here”
Sewn together in the hospital.

It began with a heavy leg,
weakness slowly ascending
Soon you found yourself here
in the hum of the emergency room

Your wife made you come in, you said
I leaned close, you whispered
“She keeps me alive, September is our 40th anniversary”

As you wheeled back under an infinite fluorescence
you laughed at your luck
Life, now interrupted just after it had resumed
following the cataclysm of your recent stroke

I held the coins from your pocket
your wedding band
and Saint Christopher necklace
Small tokens, the mementos of shedding the world as you knew it
you entered the scanner and emerged to a new unknown
Our fears confirmed; a gathering storm
brightness spilled across your image on the screen

Golf tomorrow with your friends
paperwork abandoned, pen still warm from your touch
your anniversary trip to Costa Rica
you asked for an impossible promise to see them through
The bleeding in your brain
ink smearing on the page
would change these plans

Interventions were discussed as you were whisked away to the floor
but the pressure climbed steadily
your tired vessels,
a dam that could not contain the spill

The tide still rising
you stayed afloat as your family gathered,
erasing your carefully laid plans
trying to find meaning in the broken pieces

By morning I saw your name on the palliative floor
I came by to thank you
for the gift of your presence
or maybe to sit with you

Halting before I could knock on the door
I heard laughter and love erupting within
Your children, your wife, your legacy
The echoes of your life filling the room and flowing beyond the threshold

Outside in silence I heard you there, enveloped in the brilliance of their joy
I thought about how grateful I was to meet you
to have our paths cross
to have witnessed your life

And you, buoyed up by their love
are enshrined in my memory that way

No food –
Stomach growls angrily.
No water –
Head pounds, something is wrong.
No sleep –
Mind begins to shut down.
No strength –
Arms shake under the strain.
No problem –
The surgery is over.