my partner sneaks me sunshine while the doctors look away

By on Apr 2, 2023 in Poetry

Holdings hands with spiral of time

and I pocket the little rays in my gurney
while they perform sonic echoes of my heart
and the lines rise and fall and rise and fall.

There’s abnormalities banging around in my chest;
raccoons in the wall, feverously knocking, then
pausing, waiting for me to catch another breath.

But my partner sings through tears, her hazel eyes
a constant throughout these tumultuous times spent
monopolizing my care from hospital to hospital around

the Greater Boston area. If Uber rides could talk
they would erupt with chimes of laughter
through failed insulin pods, windmilling, blurring together

like the irregularities the cardiologists just can’t pin down.
But my partner takes my hands and draws circles in my palm;
circle after circle after circle; my partner and I in a dance,

tranced, a constant looping in an open field in rural Georgia,
against the amber sky. When these constant visits
become yearly, I take the smile she offers, and memorize the lines

About

Sean William Dever is an Atlanta-based poet, educator, and editor with a MFA in Creative Writing with a focus in Poetry from Emerson College. He is a lecturer of English and writing studies at Clayton State University. He has been published in HOOT, Stickers, Unearthed Literary Magazine, Coffin Bell Journal, and Fearsome Critters Literary Magazine, among others. Sean is the poetry editor of Coffin Bell Journal and the author of the chapbook, I’ve Been Cancelling Appointments with My Psychiatrist for Two Years Now, published by Swimming with Elephants Publications.