Recover

Sample poems

Modeh Ani in the ED Treatment Facility

I find that I am here, awake, alive –
am I really that shape I see reflected,
grateful and terrified in equal measure?
Before I get in line to start the day
you roll over the blood pressure machine –
living souls reduced to vital signs
and constant checks to prove that we still breathe.
Enduring is the way that one survives this.
God won’t show up to break me out of here.
You tell me that my heartbeat’s out of range –
“Have one of the nurses check that one more time.”
Restored to wakefulness, I make the trek,
my feet in sandals from the dollar store,
soul and body supposedly reunited,
to have them check the numbers yet again.
Me, I think that healing, when it comes,
great or small, comes from a place that
is connected to life, to nature, and the world.
Your sticky note with numbers in my hand,
faith in my heart, I give the nurse my wrist.

Formed

Author of my story, weaver of my flesh:
what did you have in mind
when you mixed together continents and customs,
legacies and languages, to create
this improbable being that became me?
You formed this body with skill, mixing
diathesis with stress, predisposition with trigger,
higher set point with tendency to hoard weight
beyond what calculators say is possible,
forming the addictiveness of starvation
and inspiring people’s incredulity.
If not for the genes for which I curse you
I might not be here to stand before you.
Blessed are you, inscrutable spirit,
healer of this reluctant flesh.

Teshuvah

There are no shortcuts. There is no moment
of revelation, no thunder and lightning,
no shofar blast transcending time. There is
only noticing that you have turned away
and turning back again, gently correcting course
one second, one minute, one mealtime, one day
at a time, for the rest of your life.