Your need for blood
has brought you back into my life—
no good veins to slip
the needle in—a tube bleeds into the PICC line
in your chest.
You text to say blood levels are critical.
I come to the hall outside your room
and I don’t open the door and I don’t
unpack the card I brought.
I used to erase
all of your messages.
Nothing in my house was once yours.
Each morning I scent the air with incense
before I open my eyes I have a memory
of prayer—
your dry fingers hold mine
in church I always wondered
if I should keep my eyes closed
in meditation I don’t mind questions.
I dream I watch you on a ridge.
I stand below
unseen shards of ice scatter the trail
shaken free from evergreens
you look ahead—and step off.
I watch you fall.
I don’t think I wanted easy
as it would have been—I assume—
to disappear but not
this blistering
inside the body: not a blossom
or rotting, only a body and yours
a sick one—though
mine could be, too the instruments
have not yet proclaimed what this life has done
to my interior.
*This poem was previously published in an issue of The South Dakota Review
Rachel Sahaidachny holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Butler University. She was a finalist in the 2016 Radar Poetry Coniston Prize, awarded first prize in the WabashWatershed Indiana Poetry Awards. She is co-editor of Not Like The Rest of Us: An Anthology of Contemporary Indiana Writers, and former poetry editor of Booth: A Journal. Recent writing has been published in South Dakota Review, The Southeast Review, Radar Poetry, Written Here: The Community of Writers Poetry Review, Red Paint Hill, NUVO,Indiana Humanities and others. She lives in Indianapolis and is Executive Director of the Indiana Writers Center, a non-profit dedicated to fostering a vibrant writing community in Indiana.
Get in touch at www.rachelsahaidachny.com