Aurora Borealis
By Jessica Taylor
Dedicated to B. Snow
I could look at this pylorus
all day with you. Pale
and ruffled, it sweetly pulsates
so slowly. A small lake
of verdant bile slides
shallowly and like the tide
across its slight lip.
I love
this peaceful moment
in this sterile space.
It is you and I alone
with the skinny tunnel
of the endoscope. It is
like standing in the midnight sky
and there is the
aurora borealis.
Red Ribbon, Blue String
By Jessica Taylor
1.
At the end of spring, I am pulled
like a long pink resistant worm
from a cool, dark tunnel.
Transplanted from gun shy and tree lined
California into the humid desert
of Texas. I feel like a red headed turkey vulture
clumsily lumbering in a crowd
of ornery, sugar mad grackles.
It is so hot here, I am forced
to ride my chestnut horse before
the sun has had enough time to inflame
and boil the water particles hanging about
so merrily in the air. In silence
I ride the horse early. I wander about
the freezing new hospital in which I find myself
day in and day out. I ride the horse.
I wander more
constantly lost and perplexed
between the corridors
of OB/GYN and radiology. I ride again.
And I wonder about the rest of my life.
2.
I think I must be hoping for a friend.
Because I meet you in summer
over a gaping open chest,
while looking down at a heart stuffed
with red ribbons and blue string.
You sew one circle to the next
with elegance and calm.
I meet you during
the switching of organs
from one tired body to the next
naively hopeful one. We bring
sets of lungs snug in nests of ice
from those who no longer
make the heat to warm them.
This is the summer
in which I work madly
on my hamstrings, obsessed with
shaping them into a retracted bow string.
Perhaps this is because
I have heard that the legs
will carry you forward.
I stomp up flights of stairs
until my thighs vibrate.
I sit into utkatasana
until my hips sting.
And I wonder about the rest of my life.
3.
After we have neatly packaged
and tucked away newly sewn
happy arteries; after the metal
hearts have been snapped into place
and we have carefully but firmly sealed
sternums and ribs; then I come alive
in your soft hands.
Long after our patients drift to sleep,
rocked gently by their ventilators and
lulled by liquid sedation,
the hospital emits spaceship hums
and soft groans which I hope
are enough to cover my own.
Tucked momentarily into your
long curves, even your soft snores
quicken my heart. I beg the seconds
to slow, the sun to extend its journey
on the other side of the earth.
After our bodies finally click together,
we whisper through the few
lingering moments of the left over night,
and I do not wonder about the rest of my life.
4.
For a time, my life glows again
and everything is illuminated.
The sickness that surrounds us
becomes tolerable. As we fly
to the gardens of organs that we
pick and collect, the
constant threat of rejection is
less sinister. But the summer drains
and slows. You return to your house.
The red horse and I begin again
to ride. The foreign words I have learned
to call you are slowly forgotten
from my tongue.
Istanbul, Ankara become places
I will again never go.
In my own bed again,
I wonder about the rest of my life.
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