Our father knows all five of us and shows he knows: A hand, pressed. A nod acknowledging each daughter here at last as animals seek shelter in the cold, as however lost or found we feel or felt or will, we still seek home— surviving selves in disembodied shells. Chronos’s hand sweeps across the moment kidneys fail. When blood flow to the heart slows, stops—so matter-of-fact. This is how we terrify at symptoms from now on: each one in light of layered diagnoses, prismed in the glass, reflecting on that sterile room, our interrupted rhythms, who will come. We listen as the nurse says hearing is the last to go, and cling to this as we whisper our testimonies.
Sarah Carey's work has appeared recently in Atlanta Review, Grist, Yemassee, UCity Review, Frontier Poetry, and elsewhere. Her book reviews of other poets' work have appeared in EcoTheo Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and the Los Angeles Review. Sarah's poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Orison Anthology. She is the author of two chapbooks, including Accommodations (2019) winner of the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award. Visit her at SarahKCarey.com or on Twitter @SayCarey1.
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