Preface:
Illness is one of the most universal yet isolating experiences, as it can seem impossible to truly express one’s unique experience with pain and suffering. Especially with the COVID-19 pandemic, many patients have felt a sense of isolation like never before — discharge parties, family visits, and even simple physical gestures of solidarity have been rendered impossible.
Thus, I have written a duplex as a means of reflection, remembrance, and witnessing to the experiences of many patients that go unheard — the silent moments in a hospital room at the coming of night, the stillness of waiting for medical updates, the sacred value of witnessing and hope. The duplex is a unique poetic form, with each line containing between nine and eleven syllables organized into couplets that build off of one another — the first line of each couplet mirrors the previous line with the first and last lines of the poem mirroring each other. It conveys a sense of movement and memory. I hope it gives readers space to exist in between the lines, to linger, to reflect, and to heal.
Hospital (A Duplex)
Instead of time, she wishes for stillness.
An IV drips, giving a steady empty.
White drips from her eyes, steadily emptied.
Oh, to live the life and not the side effects.
In the face of death, life is the side effect.
It’s late, and again, a fight to sleep.
It’s late, but her daughter stays, fighting sleep
and blows a breath to trace a fingertip heart.
Her two-floored heart flutters like fingertips,
as she lies. Breath undulating in soft waves,
beached under blue linens — each a wave,
sands piling under her hourglass feet.
Remember when we would use feet to measure,
instead of time? Yes. She wishes for it still.
By Sophia Li
