Sarah Kay

This is a poem by Palestinian-American Hala Alian that I love called Spoiler.

Can you diagnose fear?

The red tree blooming from my uterus to throat.

It's one long nerve, the doctor says.

There's a reason breathing helps.

The muscles slackening like a dead marriage.

Mine are simple things.

Food poisoning in Paris, hospital lobbies, my husband laughing in another room the door closed.

For days, I cradle my breast and worry the cyst like a bead.

There's nothing to pray away.

The tree loves her cutter.

The nightmares have stopped, I tell the doctor.

I know why.

They stopped because I baptized them.

This is how my mother and I speak of dying.

The thing you turn away by letting in.

I'm tired of April.

It's killed our matriarchs, and in the backyard I've planted an olive sapling in the wrong soil.

There is a droopiness to the branches that reminds me of my friend, the one who calls to ask what's the point, or the patients who come to me swarmed with misery and astonishment, their hearts like newborns after the first needle.

What now?