hallway rendezvous

Andrea Gilmore Bykovskyi
School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Emergency Medicine
2023
Poem

 

beneath your despair
and my anticipation
we are both watching the same silent film:
the end of an era.

every death
is new
but the dance
familiar
you question, I gesture.

I have a lot of important words for you
somnolence. secretions. cheyne. stokes.
most importantly I have room
and it holds
whatever you have that needs holding

this might be your first dance
or maybe, you have been here before
at the fault line
of being
and then not being

we are all breathing liminal air now
and this is the space
where we hold it together