K. Iver
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11-20-1997 in the hospital I’m high on antipsychotics high meaning you stopped calling stopped answering the phone but I can sleep meaning my thoughts aren’t chasing me toward permanent relief in the hospital on my industrial twin mattress a nurse hums me to sleep my roommate’s also a sophomore she’s been here two days and wants to leave she says they think I’m too sad to go home but I’m sad because I’m here I can’t tell you any of this how much I want to stay in these fluorescent rooms last night they kept me awake until 8 a.m. for a brain scan I don’t mind these temporary parents the nurse wakes me up tells me when to eat gives me the medicine I’d once begged my mom for my mom called an exorcist instead I can’t tell you that he waited with a large hand on my head for a metaphor to take literal shape I emptied my mom’s bathroom pharmacy of Benadryl I can’t tell you how instinctual the planning how accidental the surviving my mom pulled me from bed and drove me to rehearsal my friend caught me from a falling spin while “Waltz of the Flowers” was playing my friend the sugar plum fairy noticed I couldn’t lift my arms she asked how many pills she cried as I spoke about your eyes from last year’s balcony how you watched a man in a soldier costume wind me up how you waited in your red sweater for kids to take pictures with the windup doll I never told you my thoughts hurt unless you were talking tonight I’m not wondering what scared you away I’m pretty sure it was mom I’m pretty sure this very clean lobby is also the courtyard three miles from where you first looked at me first poured candy into my hand is your bedroom where you said god child I miss you so much and the landline’s delivery of the word child diverted my plans to break up with you my plans to let god win I paced around my room past an open latch it cut so deep I could see muscle a nurse sewed your voice into my knee with seven stiches one word for each stitch I’m not making this up the scar is still pink after three months this tattoo of your voice no one can silence my one thought how alive and gorgeous we both are |
K. Iver is a nonbinary trans poet from Mississippi. Their poems have appeared in Boston Review, Gulf Coast, Puerto del Sol, Salt Hill, TriQuarterly, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. Their book Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco won the 2022 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry and is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions. They have a Ph.D. in Poetry from Florida State University and are currently the 2021-2022 Ronald Wallace Fellow for Poetry at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.