Poetry and Medicine
July 9, 2019
Triptych
Akshay Pendyal, MD1
Author Affiliations Article Information
1National Clinician Scholars Program, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut
JAMA. 2019;322(2):175. doi:10.1001/jama.2019.4325
At seven weeks you are little more than a heartbeat
four weeks four chambers is the mnemonic I’ve stored away
along with an image of a tube twisting upon itself
like a pair of jeans in the wash
when you leave us in the middle of the day forgive me—
it feels like losing something I didn’t know I had.
That night, we wrap ourselves tightly in
sarcasm ibuprofen & booze
knowing that of course you’ll be back.
At 21 weeks I marvel at the impossibility of tiny valves
miniature sails against grayscale firmament & I wonder
how could something this small hold everything I have.
Later in a cold office listening but not really listening
to colder words that feel both familiar and foreign
I hold in my hand a Polaroid
an undulating sawtooth your hummingbird heartbeat
convinced I’ll never see you again.
At 40 weeks I wander hospital hallways that I know by heart
though this time there are no hearts to save only my own heart because
when it starts to look like
you might finally arrive my heart begins its gallop
& I realize that even though you gave us extra time
I still won’t be able to keep you
from one day learning what
I’ve had to learn—that the world
is made up of roughly equal parts hope &
loss.
Section Editor: Rafael Campo, MD, MA, Associate Editor.
Back to top Article Information
Corresponding Author: Akshay Pendyal, MD (akshay.pendyal@yale.edu).