Office Visit
Honeycombing, the doctor says,
and for an instant, I let myself
rest in what I love about that word,
sticky textured golden noun turned verb.
But the world he’s leading us through
on the nightscape CT scan is inside you,
the two crucial islands, your lungs.
This, he tells us, is healthy tissue,
dark sky barely flecked with stars.
And this, tapping the line
of a lacy shore, scars.
I remember the first time
I made out our boy’s profile
on a cloudy screen like this,
tiny nub of thumb between
what would become his lips.
Back then, I saw myself
as standing on a precipice,
knowing that when I dropped
I would fall toward life.
But this, you and I
under the buzzing glare
of such harsh light,
it’s life too, isn’t it? I’m asking
this of both of us. Stay.
Notice the heat in our held hands.
Ona Gritz’s poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Bellevue Literary Review, Catamaran Literary Reader, One Art, and many other journals and anthologies. Her books include Geode, a finalist for the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award, Present Imperfect: Essays, and August Or Forever, a middle grade novel forthcoming in February 2023. Recent honors include two Notable mentions in The Best American Essays, a Best Life Story in Salon,and a winning entry in The Poetry Archive Now: Wordview 2020 project. This poem first appeared in One Art.
Thank you for your kind comments and astute reading of my poem, Eric. I love your question about the ending. I had a line that I ultimately edited out asking my husband and me to notice that I was writing in the present tense, followed by “No. Stay. Notice the heat in our held hands.” Members of my critique group felt it took them out of the poem and I ultimately agreed. But what I… Read more »
Dear Ms. Gritz, I love this: tracing out the trajectory of life by connecting the time between two very different radiologic scans! Thats such a beautiful concept. I believe the first scan that you refer to is an ultrasound of your son? The second a CT of your husband’s lungs? I love how you allow yourself the brief indulgence of letting the word “honeycombing” resonate in your writer’s brain. It’s sweet and transient though, as… Read more »