A visit from The Healing Muse: 'Upon Receiving the Diagnosis, I Am Fraught'

Deirdre Neilen, PhD: Colette Parris is a Caribbean American attorney who has returned to her literary roots during the pandemic. She sent us a poem that captures the aftermath of a devastating diagnosis on the parent trying to process such unwelcome news. Here is "Upon Receiving the Diagnosis, I Am Fraught":

that is to say

that I am countless leagues

under the sea,

sans submarine

that is to say

that your knives

shaped like syllables

have punctured my protections

resulting in leakage of vermilion

terror

that is to say

that when you suggest

sympathetically

that once I've wrapped my head

around your serrated knives,

I may want to make some calls

I laugh uproariously (to myself)

as I wonder when,

exactly, will that be

that is to say

that I am repeating on a loop,

in my internal voice,

the impossible thing

you have told me;

that there is something wrong

with my child

do you have any idea

how hard for me

that is to say