why do old timey doctors carry a suitcase
with the plus symbol on the side?
It’s to pack up your problems into positive baggage.
That’s what the back of the popsicle stick says, at least.
Sometimes, procedures require a popsicle
as a form of treatment
because your throat is to raw to eat
tongue to numb to chew
brain still foggy from sedatives
leaving you
alone to collect your scattered thoughts strewn
about the hospital room

What they are looking for inside me
was never made explicit.
Probably to prevent too much stomach acid
from sizzling up in the stress of, do I have it
better somehow than
what is it

Google suggests the gamut
from taking too much Advil
to obscure and fatal conditions,
have I unwound too far to bounce back
going out after a stressful shift
at the spring factory, caught the glimpse
of one too many sunsets
from the patio of a bar where my moon
face feels more like a metaphor
than a side affect,
I can’t help it

to wonder if these changes
are a fault, the double edge sword
of the social act slicing as I swallow my fear,
could I have slowed the progression
of life altering illness
if I’d abstained from living a little bit more,
is the curtain closing on the performance
or just the Johnny gown quick change,

or did they just find evidence
of every body I’ve ever loved
biopsied bits of the crushes
I’d never had the guts to spill,
scorned lovers kisses settled deep in my throat
turned sour and ulcerative
from so many years neglected
lingering gastric shadows
in the shallow gurgle of longing poetics

do I have slow bleeding growths
or rogue tissues, some cluster
of expansion trying to crawl up and out
from inside of who I was?
On out-growing a body, can you?
I read The Body Keeps the Score
but how many tally marks
can the esophagus hold
like the rings of a tree
for every scrap of bark
tan leather swallowed after finding
my foot in my mouth

my most practiced executions
never considered Arnica for contusions
could come with consequences like
memories washed out with
this twilight sedation, reminiscent
of college-kid solo cup basements
from blue Curaçao to Mezcal,

they’ll call
in 6 to 7 business days
to discuss the results posted on
My chart
My cellphone a direct spiral from
Googling words that weren’t meant for
regular conversation, and I’m sure
the doctor will say something like,

the next steps are common
crones are not a mere folktale anymore
we have made advancements and
I should run new labs at what cadence
take this pill
in between the others already in rotation,
resume the Pepcid, lay off the Aspirin,

the front desk will call me a pin cushion
and we will all just keep joking
because a laugh is the last thing I can stomach
the best thing my torn up insides can still muster.
Why does a doctor always carry a pencil?
In case he needs to draw blood.
I draw up a lump from collar bone to cheek
and gulp it back
after all it could be nothing,
not every negative is blister-packaged trauma