by Sophie Klahr
When the nurse on the phone won’t tell me
where you are, I turn my body into wind
troubling the city of hospitals.
Slang of nurses, blood numbers, legalities;
my disease has made me fluent in Emergency;
at the front desks they are not allowed
to say you are here, but they do not say
you are not here, they say, If he was here
would you want to send back a note?
and I write three notes
in three hospitals, watching the nurse
for her smooth head’s small twitch that says,
He isn’t here.
It’s Mercy Hospital, finally, that has you.
And again, because you are not family
I am a waiting room, crowded with sound.
Something-something-terror
jangles across the television: old news.
Two children, strangers, discuss superhero du jour:
Iron Man Iron Man can he can fly, he has guns, he can turn
into whatever he needs.
The crows have come back
to the city for the spring. They swerve
over each river, crying to one another
Come here come here come here come here
come here. Come here come here
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