OLIVIA

The incremented tube of the ventilator snakes down her throat
as though a tree has already taken root through her body,
or a lightning bolt, searching for her core. I grip the rail of the hospital bed
until my knuckles turn white, finally brave enough to clasp her hand. She is not awake
to tell me not to, and it feels like abusing the dead, cradling her
diaphoretic hand in my own, the cool sheen of sweat
on her wrist, that I rotate to see the tattoo that I only ever saw in pictures,
the golden roots of her hair, glinting like foil beneath the fluorescent lights,
the arch of her eyebrows, that I realize mirror my own. Cousin,
your mother sits on the opposite side of the bed, and I want to ask her if dead is better
than gay. But the open shell of your ear waits, curled like a question mark,
and I know you would not want me to speak to your mother that way.
Instead, I hold your fingers that will never play basketball,
or hold your girlfriend's hand, again. I count your breaths,
your chest heaving with wind forced by the ventilator. I imagine your bronchioles
as tree branches, stretching upwards like open hands,
the blood in your capillaries jolted forward by the clatter of your heart,
like a train that starts and stops, that you stepped off when I looked away

Amanda L is a 28 year old poet from Lake Worth FL. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in issues of Levee Magazine, Sky Island Journal, Pine Row Press, and others.