A journal of creative writing, photography, and visual art created by members of the entire Penn State College of Medicine and Hershey Medical Center community
by dkt10
I only have today
Maybe, I will have
Tomorrow
But I only
See today
Tomorrow
Can be a long
Time away
Even forever
I only have today
Exactly
What is
In front of me
I may
Not wake up
Tomorrow
I am not
worried
About it
I only have today
Tonight I
Am surrounded
In bed
By my three dogs
And one cat
I only have
Today
I can’t see
Any further than that
I only have
Today
by dkt10
© Zvjezdana Sever Chroneos, PhD, CCRP
Department of Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology
When you left,
Not ever to return,
Stillness chained me down,
Not a word was said,
Nor a grunt of pain heard.
When you left,
My heart suspended in midair,
Swaying like a late fruit
To be battered in storms,
And torn apart by beasts.
When you left,
Abandoning your dreams,
For us, to catch them like
Butterflies in the clouds,
Injured, when touched.
When you left,
The sun blinded my eyes,
No picture that I could see,
Only iron-colored pain,
To paint my fading memories.
When you left,
Swallowed by jaws of your absence,
I took in my first breath.
Until then, I only knew to cry,
Or to hope, endlessly.
When you left,
You were alone and crushed,
Curtailed in the white sheets,
Your suffering body,
Hiding from evil spirits.
When you left,
My own presence
Reduced to remembrances;
My faith, as a forgotten bird,
Soared to the desert of sorrows.
by dkt10
It was the Spring of 2014 at Penn State Hershey Medical Center …
A physician’s sharp eye found the disease …
Offering hope in the journey I was about to enter …
Visions of despair and an uncertain future were in sight …
A trip to an amusement park may offer a dark tunnel some light …
Not expecting the ride to blow off my hat, with no hair and a skeletor face,
a vision of many pitiful stares controlled my mind’s space…
I jumped off the ride and snagged my cover …
I wanted to avoid embarrassment for my son and his cousin …
When I walked into the crowd an older park man asked my whereabouts with spite …
Hearing my niece say “her hat blew off and she jumped off the ride”…
The park man berated me for my perceived stunt …
Pronouncing that he could expel me from the park’s future fun …
I lifted my hat to reveal the need for cover, especially from the sun …
The park man appeared to be unconcerned, his web of power already spun …
The kids wanted to ride again, after all this may be the last time with me …
We waited in line, silently, until we reached the park man and his nasty gleam …
He accepted the kid’s tickets and then made the announcement for all in line to hear …
That I was not allowed on the ride and again arrived my vision of public fear …
As the crowd stared at me in anticipation of conflict, surely these curious souls would understand if I were to plead to the park man for compassion to share …
I pulled off my hat and loudly proclaimed “I have already revealed to you that I have cancer.
I admit I was wrong for jumping off the ride but under the circumstances, would you reconsider or care?”…
The park man and I both slowly turn our heads towards his intended audience …
His continued nasty gleam at me was now many towards him …
Without looking me in the eye, the park man took my ticket …
My earlier fear of pitiful stares was now courage revisioned …
This short ride seemed like a mile as I rode with my greatest smile!
by dkt10
I walked outside, the harsh wind whistling past my ears.
How will things ever be the same?
Days, months, years, spent battling. And for what? It seems as if it was all for naught.
I suppose it just wasn’t meant to be; yet, the same thought still rings through my head.
How will things ever be the same?
What could I do and what could I give to return to how things used to be?
To escape the ever-present change in life that never seems to stop.
Some things never change, they say. Well why can’t this be one of those things?
How will things ever be the same?
Just a little while ago, everything seemed to be so calm, so clear.
But now it feels cloudy, as if my vision has been ripped away from me.
I try to take a walk to clear my mind and to escape this everlasting haze before me.
To get away from the cold bleakness that fills my horizon.
But I can’t focus on anything else apart from what I’ve just heard.
Just one thought continues to plague my mind.
How will things ever be the same?
As my feet pound against the hard surface below, this thought just can’t escape the depths of the sea within my head.
Just days ago, the air was flowing with anticipation.
Excitement hung in the breeze, swirling in every direction, engulfing those around it.
And like a wave at high tide, you rose,
swallowing everything away with you as you sank back into the ocean.
My toes stood in the sand, desperately gripping the endless grains beneath them.
Until they could no longer.
I looked down and there was nothing.
Just as there was everything a few moments ago, now there is nothing.
Save for one thought flowing through my brain.
How will things ever be the same?
How will I ever be the same?
by dkt10
My mother cut open the paper bag and presented it flat on the kitchen counter. Her tongue tipped from her lips in concentration as she measured and marked two inches from the top and bottom of the bag. Gold glittered nails creased two folds with surgical precision. She raised my physical science textbook and nestled it in the brown cocoon. All 6th grade textbooks must be covered by Friday. Deft thumbs, cracked at the corner near the nail, coaxed the covers into the new sleeves. She wrote the word “science” in neat bold letters across the cover. My mother took a deep breath, ran her hands, creased like crepe paper, across the coarse paper cover then tucked the gem into my book bag.
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The clerk told me, “I’m sorry we are out of plastic bags with the virus, we only have paper.” He could only see my eyes with my mask, but he could tell I wasn’t happy. I was tired and sure the bottom of this glorified lunch bag was going to give out. “Okay,” I told him. I paid and a pit rose in my stomach as I watched him bag. I envisioned walking to my car and the gallon busting through the bottom of the bag, smashing to the ground, and milk gurgling from the cracked plastic, lost to the blacktop. My oranges, zesty, bright as the sun rolled from reach, now bruised and smashed. Myself, a stone in my gut, deserted, everyone else 6 feet away. I heard a voice, “Miss, your change.” I made my way to the car holding my breath. The bags held. I tucked them in the trunk.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
When dressing, pearls are the last thing that you put on and the first thing that you take off. They are delicate and special, easily damaged and should be kept in their own jewelry pouch. I do not have a pearl pouch. I have a brown paper sandwich bag.
The bag is for our masks, it lets them breathe. In the morning I pluck my mask from said bag. The bag, once crisp with clean lines and right angles now resembles an iron-only dress shirt dredged from the bottom of a laundry bag. Soon, all you see are my eyes.
I ate an orange for lunch; the flesh was shriveled, resigned. I carry the stone in my gut constantly now; days have turned to weeks, to months. It’s like breathing underwater. We bump elbows, no hugs or handshakes. My last patient’s name is Alice. I meet her. Her hands are folded on her lap; her skin is crepe paper, like a party streamer for a celebration I haven’t been to in months. Before I can introduce myself she grabs my hands in hers. I hold my breath. Cups them like a prayer and says, “Some days are twos and some days are tens, honey this won’t last forever.” I can feel my face grow hot. My eyes well but my tears hold. The stone in my gut shifts. I exhale.
Stones are for sinking. Pearls are born of irritation and strife. This alchemy of pain is more than a stone. I breathe. I carefully print my name across the top of a fresh paper bag and nest my mask inside. I fold the top about two inches with surgical precision. I held. Today I tuck hope inside myself.
Judge’s Comment:
Using a humble, tactile object as a constant to link disparate experiences, this piece shows the surprising strength both of this material and the people who handle it. It captures perfectly the mundane and extraordinary aspects of life during this pandemic.
by dkt10
Unraveling lives
like a tangled ball of yarn
Disengaging two strands
undoing the knots that have formed between them.
It took time and patience.
I was able to do it
and now the two yarns are separated.
Like two people–no longer tethered by their vows.
Us
by dkt10
Fields of flowers
Geese flying by
Honking song
Going South
Green turns to orange
Orange browns
The trees let loose
And there’s a Fall
a fall
A hearing
A sighting
That’s death
A heirophany,
I stood over the abyss
I offered my body
Tired, warm, worn
More wrinkled
This is the cold lot
This is my life
How did I get so loved?
by dkt10
Who was the last one to hold these hands–
With nails freshly painted purple–
that knew her name?
Her favorite kind of birthday cake?
The funny way her feet turned out as she walked?
Who helped her pick out this magenta,
Never thinking of it as a color that complements
The simple manila toe tag.
Now, I will be the last to hold her hand,
the purple polish still unchipped.
I do not know her name,
The song that played for her first dance,
Whether she ordered a burger medium rare or without pickles,
The first address she could memorize,
Or the dreams she once held dear.
It is not lost on me that this heart I know so intimately, I do not know nearly at all.
I do not know who last held these hands, nails freshly painted purple.
I wonder if a memory of her danced into their mind today.
I do not know what tragedies or commercials or sweet promises made her pull her hands to her chest, or how her laugh rang out and for which kind of jokes.
I do not know if she had regrets.
Do most of us?
And yet I know with full certainty that in life, she chose death to be a gift,
And so perhaps,
beyond just the sight of it,
I know her heart after all.
by dkt10
I can see you
but I can’t see you
there’s something missing
but I know it’s there
I can see you
but I can’t see you
a smile is hiding
behind what you wear
I can see you
and you look to me
your eyes try to share
the feelings inside
I can’t see you
but I can hear you
your voice speaks louder
than your eyes
I can’t see you
but I can feel you
no smile is hiding
I judged too soon
I can’t see you
I can’t see you
a masked face before me
in the same room
by dkt10
The assault on my epidermis
Sparked action in my neurons
Igniting a bundle of thought
The thought seeped through capillaries
Traveled through veins
Finding a path to my heart
Pumping to my extremities
Finding truth in fingers and toes
Validation and back to my heart
The thought, sought
To find its way out
Trekking the route to my lungs
Floating on carbon dioxide
Traversing vocal cords
Traveling expanding routes
Past tongue, chattering teeth and lips
Dear surgeon
It is too cold in this operating room