I sat in the doctor’s office waiting room
for exactly 14 minutes.
The chair I sat in
creaked every time I blinked.
My inhale and exhale
sounded like bricks
tumbling across my diaphragm.
I swore someone thought
I was slamming
a wrecking ball into the
waiting room’s wall.
Maybe I was trying to escape.
I scraped my hair behind
my ears for the 15th time.
Why was that clock so damn loud?
My knee started to shake.
167 pumps every minute.
I counted them in my mind
like the way I counted
the channels on TV when
I flipped through them.
My legs wanted me to run,
carry my body
to another place where
my footsteps would sound
like crashing waves, alive,
and my hand would
be full of salt and sparkle.
Maybe I would be able to
hold something more
than the sweat on my
palms. My chipped nail-polish
soon became the
most interesting piece
of art, like those
decals of flowers and fish
stuck to the ceilings in hospitals.
They are pathetic but distracting.
The polish broke in patterns
like a mosaic. They didn’t fit
together. They looked dirty.
My calloused hands never
looked that small before.
I balled them up and
suffocated them under my legs.

The nurse called my name?
and I thought I heard a ?
Hail Mary escape?
from between my eyelashes.

Thirty minutes later?
I couldn’t feel my feet. I wanted?
my mom to hold my hands?
in both of hers. I wanted ?
her to tell me she loved?
me still.?
How could I explain a mother’s love?

I could feel my heartbeat?
in my ears. The veins in my hands?
felt like they had weights?
in them. The rings on my ?
fingers rattled as lifted?
them to my stomach.?
I pressed them into the ?
barren ocean?
gently rocking in my core.?
I guess it was more
of?an apple core,?
a rotting one with?
mangled bite marks, ?
fuzzy gray, green mold?
clinging to the stem and flesh, ?
and hollow claw gouges ?
where the seeds used to be.?
But there was an?
undiscovered and unexplored?
depth that I could feel?
inching up the back?
of my throat. It tasted like?
iron and salt.?
What was down there??
Or what was left??
What asphyxiated creature?
never gets to see my?
eyes in the 3 AM moonlight?
looking down at it?

In 19 years, my body
killed the function
I was told my life
was meant for.
How can I know what
to do with empty hands
when I haven’t even found
something worth holding on to?