Rewritten
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POETRY
Rewritten Anna Sheen 1 Received: 10 June 2020 / Accepted: 20 October 2020 # Academic Psychiatry 2020
In early spring, I watched a woman reach into her throat and pull out a book. The spine came within her beneath vellum ribs laid endless pages. Illness and personas mutate over time, words take on new meanings. Her husband said he could not guess what lay beneath her flesh, which thoughts she tucked into the margins behind his ear and pressed into his palm like letters sent from a past season. In winter, her house was leveled by an avalanche. Her children ambered in layers of dust. When everything thawed she looked for their bodies but found only blank pages, empty diaries ready for someone else to fill. They told her that being afraid of loss was like screaming into a canyon and fearing the echo. An abandoned woman is just a woman. So she aimed to have it all, like the fledgling bird taking ecstatic flight outstripping any terror. She took my hands and offered herself, covers open. By next spring, we were creating a new language: breathing, lift, light.
* Anna Sheen [email protected] 1
Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Newark, NJ, USA
Poet’s Statement This poem is inspired by a patient I saw on the addiction psychiatry service. I wanted to capture her healing process, complex relationship with herself and loved ones, and inspiring force of will.
Compliance with Ethical Standards Disclosures The corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.
Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
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