FALL RISK IN ROOM 107
Chloe Bryan
Think of my spine as a string of plums:
twenty round, one blistered
or as a boxed-up cake
you snapped into the backseat
or as a series of bones and discs, shivering
hot on the image machine.
At midnight, pearlish light cuts
the hospital drapes. The hallway
is my moon, a telescope away.
I consider asking the one woman doctor
to pluck me up with tongs and shake me
so that I might sweat out the gravity.
Post-op, she will repeat
the word rongeur, while I imagine camellias
blooming incidentally
over my body’s lessening.
Chloe Bryan is an editor, poet, and journalist who lives in Brooklyn. She has a chihuahua named Pete.


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