Anatomy Practical
- Anatomy Practical
I am searching for the phrenic nervewhen I remember the bad feeling I have about you.
Formalin pricking my nose, an attentive hush pressing all around me.This test is timed, butI look into the body, and I'm lost.
The word itself makes me anxious,sounds frantic, frenetic.Lightning strike climbing up beside the heart.
Now my eyes won't focus, and I remembersleeping, head on your chest on the airport floor, how my dreamswere full of rhythms: a locked door and someone knockingwith a strange kind of urgency—steady but ceaseless.
At the same time I notice the fingernailson the bloodless hands, yet undissected,are painted pink.
And the timer sounds. [End Page 90]
Amelie Meltzer is a San Francisco native studying in Pittsburgh, PA. She is a medical student and activist working to address racial bias in healthcare and promote the needs of queer and gender-nonconforming patients. She writes poetry and nonfiction. Her writing appears in New Ohio Review, Roanoke Review, Stoneboat, RipRap, and The Hippocrates Prize Anthology.
