Grief and Other Remedies

Submitted by Elaine Hsiang

Published July 20, 2019

Moved in. Worked my heart
until it could sit quietly.

Found the most beautiful part of her story
I could hold in my hands.

With an eye to years ago,
I saw who she would be by now

& shattered the mirror.
Hard not to reach for the pieces

on the floor labeled “anger,”
& sleep with the curtains still drawn.

To be faced with this & another
city one weekend, & hear

the people she’d cared for coming home
or staying to fill an already tender tooth.

I came to sob into a singing lap.
I came to write about prayer

without dislodging omen after omen
from the place where chest meets throat.

To be offered small silence, or a new prognosis
in front of her garden.

The raspberries from the farmer’s market
best saved to cure a nightmare.

An urge for medicine
to have more than one meaning.

Note: A previous version of "Grief, and other remedies" was awarded second prize in the 15th Annual Michael E. DeBakey Medical Student Poetry Award at Baylor College of Medicine.

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