Content Warning: diagnosis
He lifted the sheet above my knees
as if unveiling a secret
that didn’t belong to me.
The room engulfed in white and cold,
all tenderness erased.
He said lie down,
so I did.
His gloved hands summoned rivers
where my form should have been still.
He filled me with science,
the pain blooming like an unwanted truth.
I cried out,
not in language,
but in the body’s last defense against
being undone.
Spread eagle on the table, I was made a thing
he did not dare look at.
Empathy had no place
between the instruments and my skin.
He said walk,
so I did,
bare legs trembling, wires protruding,
hospital gown yawning open at my spine.
I paced back and forth,
each breath a confession, each step a loss,
the socks on my feet
the only softness left.
He said sit,
so I did.
The table creaked,
its soiled paper shroud folding beneath me.
He spoke the language of endings,
sentences that rearranged my future
without considering kindness.
Time stood still.
Beside him, the nurse’s cross
caught the fluorescent light,
a small sun burning over her heart.
I thought:
God has nothing to do with this.
That was the day my body became both
battlefield and map.
He said goodbye,
so I broke.
And when I was ready to gather myself
back around me,
I found that the pieces didn’t quite fit
the same way as before.
Though I left that room still breathing,
some part of me stayed behind
pressed into the torn paper on the table,
waiting to be made whole again.
Based in NYC, Rebekah Norris (she/her) is a writer and lifelong creative whose work draws on observation and lived experiences. Her love of poetry and storytelling began in college while studying music and working as a singer post-grad, where she embraced free-form writing between rehearsals.
She returned to prose during COVID and continues exploring themes of daily life, politics, and living with an invisible illness. That same creative impulse flows through her work at her SoHo hair salon, IRON | FEATHER, as well as studies in herbalism, spell work, and reiki practice.
Instagram: @rebekahnorris_hair