Triage
Splashed red satin, impossible paper hearts—
aisles in stores are readying for Valentine’s Day
as I consider the last time I was touched.
But I am still thinking of every car crash,
every bloodstain, of every rough & unsaid thing
blooming hurt in this body as I walk through loss.
Sound/light/love/grief
they all may come in waves but so, too,
do intervals on an electrocardiogram.
I flatlined for thirty seconds that February day
over three years ago, tripling my understanding
of what a heart can do, what it must hold—
Like other things that come in threes, (or don’t):
3/10: The portion of single Americans who have had sex since the coronavirus pandemic began
A three-eyed snake found on a northern Australian highway
Three bullet holes in the back of a Black man entering his own home
Three years of writing poems about the same dead love
“You only get three wishes—”
& what would they be? That the man
carrying his dinner as he reached for his keys
would walk safely inside the door,
hang his coat on the hook, sit, & eat.
That the poems would stand up on their own
& walk backwards through the heavy years.
That you’d remember what it felt like
to hold a hand in your hand,
& not bleed out the best parts of you.
To love the color red again.
To create waves that peaked into mountains
from plateaued lines in a hospital bed, & that you’d climb them all.
That you’d find someone, something, that didn’t lie, strike, or constrict
but expand— a love that sees fully, from birth,
beyond limits of what was ever supposed to be there.
*With a line from January 2021 Harper’s Index
Kara Knickerbocker is the author of the chapbooks The Shedding Before the Swell (dancing girl press) and Next to Everything that is Breakable (Finishing Line Press). Her poetry and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming from: Poet Lore, HOBART, SWWIM, Portland Review, and the anthologies Pennsylvania’s Best Emerging Poets, Crack the Spine, and more. Originally from Pennsylvania, she writes with the Madwomen in the Attic at Carlow University, and co-curated the MadFridays Reading Series. http://www.karaknickerbocker.com