Rowan Magnuson

Is it too much to tell you that I tried?

Is it too much to tell you that I spend my red lights 

feeling how air moves through trachea 

and teeth, imagining a life cracked 

and crepitant—

Isabella Mendes Izidoro

After taking in all that makes my donor – and all of us – human, I looked down at their body again and noticed the scars, the wrinkles, the life lived.

Alix Pupo Wiss.

But did you listen?

Did you hear my voice,

Worn down daily by circumstance?

Did you hear that phrase I used?

“Aching pain”

Zoe Onion.

She takes up space-

not at first, but-

as the visit goes on- I watch as she

expands,

Alex Hamel.

I am a shadow,

Not the absence of light,

But a step or two behind,

And a question or four.

Kasturi Biswas.

Fanny could not believe,

Just out of a pandemic and the humanity walking straight into a war.

Ritika Walia.

In three robotic chirps, the bed alarm responds,

To a one-sided conversation going nowhere.

Diana Liu.

It was telling my preceptor the positive screening, and wondering if the heaviness in my chest was the weight of caring about my patients;

Sara Wang.

At the end of the day, my white coat is a privilege

Though white does not show much.

Bronwyn Wade-Gill.

Thin gold glasses, delicately rest on the tip of her nose framing gray blue eyes

How they once sparkled...

Andrea Chin.

You may even cry at a counter where they’re trying to cook dinner,

Keep working, breathing, and forgiving yourself.

Bend, don’t break.

Chris Chang.

In this COVID-19 battle

I’m a bullet sponge 

for my patients’ surplus emotions.

Alicia Lamoureux.

I wonder what you are thinking

As you lie on your coveted over-stuffed pillow,

Taking your pre-bedtime nap beside the roaring pellet stove.

Tiffany Chen.

The patient returns a wry smile,

“I know, it’s crazy out there.”

My breath becomes hot behind the mask as the procedure drags on.

David Hatem.

Later,

She joined me,

Walking down the same hall again,

Checking,

“Is it okay to have a resident involved?”

TJ Lee.

Parts within me, they wither away

But a pattern persists in this spot that I stay

Christopher Lee.

In the end of you, of me,

does the we persist to be?

Henry Del Rosario.

Her eyes are loud. Her face so round; a pot about to boil over.

I conjure hope to her that this too will end