After, I lie still and he presses
two fingers hard in the fold
of my hip, but not quite hurting.
A few minutes in, I say,
You must get tired. He nods
at the screen and says, Look,
she’s tracing the shot
of your ventricle open,
then closed. A little Photoshop lasso
crawls around the big TV
I hadn’t even noticed, too scared
to look around. Or scared

is not the word—I didn’t care.
Scare. Care. I trace them
with my tongue. I know
I should feel joy—the news
already back from the doctor,
no major block, and I figure
that later, alone, I’ll cry,
a hand to my chest, say
Thank you. But lying here,
my mind’s a slow-moving
train, cow-catcher on the front,
all the timber of fear or joy
sliding off, away. I was so

afraid before that I gladly
downed the two round Valium
and two white pellets of Benadryl
in one swallow, the nurse’s cocktail wink,
and never thought of Mom until later,
how that round pill came with every breakfast,
and her year became a bourbon bottle full
of my brother, the brine of his body
that gave out early one morning. After,

her body wasn’t her own,
a trembling stranger driving. Strange
how we move through each other,
how later in the car I’m laughing
to my friend, Not caring is the shit,
and also seeing Mom in her chair,
Dad counting bottles by the trash
outside. And also seeing, yes, my heart
on its dark screen, open, then closed,
and the nurse, his strong hand
holding time together.

Amy Miller

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