It is a lost breath that occupies your body intravenously,
stale air in a saline drip, the needle’s engorged mouth
an owl or magpie, snatching each cell for its brood.
The nurses chirp amongst the chairs, their penitent offerings
a catechism, a clockwork ministry: Prayerful, holy.
My sick-bay is my own undoing, hypochondria beating
rabbit-quick in a world of blue-rubber-gloved familiarity.
Stigmata burns my throat, as piercing as Pilot.

The injection site itches my skin like the yellow pollen sky
of childhood. I recall that first broken immunity:
I stumble through the dark halls seeking the middle-school nurse.
She sends me home to fall into the arms of diphenhydramine,
first flush of the snake slumbering within. She knows
I am sometimes faking it, but she’s had migraines and life
enough to know to listen to what’s left unsaid in the body:
a rabbit heart sighing and a brook babbling red, crossing
itself blind-eyed, its murmurings frightened.

Now I am old in the eyes of that child: fatigued,
stumbling, then plugged into a machine attended to by a
flock of nuns whose names I’ll never know,
cooing above me as mourning doves, my body
penitent.

Allison Martel (she/her) is a poet and librarian living in Western Massachusetts. As an undergraduate studying English literature and creative writing at Framingham State University, Martel won the 2006 Marjorie Sparrow Literary Award for Poetry. She holds an MLIS from San Jose State University and is considering pursuing an MFA in creative writing after many years away from the writing life.

Website: cyanotic.org
Instagram: @dearsylvan