At the hospital

Zoe Phillips
she/hers
2022

There are no vines only vinyl countertops printed with the fuzzy texture of a disconnected TV screen where a single phone rests like a priest among all of us newly-minted Luddites wondering at the loss of our own phones and computers and the free will to abandon our minds because yes, we still have some grasp on those I guess, like children clutching balloons filled with air from our very own lungs. We have been convinced by the powers that be that these flimsy orbs are filled to bursting with helium and might, if we let go, float up beyond our reach and maybe kill a bird or blind a pilot, something dangerous we’ve been told, and the contents could warp our thoughts into tinny versions of ourselves. We do not know that lung-air is mostly carbon dioxide and our mind-balloons can only drift slowly to the ground, bumping gently against each other and coming to rest at our feet where we can pick them up and go on about our lives.

Though I am also a healthcare worker, these poems speak through the patients' perspective (mine and others). The pandemic was yet another reminder that we are all just temporary guests in the land of the well; I hope to explore the uncertainty and anxiety of living with this knowledge.

Zoe Phillips lives in Brooklyn, works in Manhattan, and prefers the ferry over all other modes of transportation. She writes criticism, short fiction, and sometimes poetry.