Your arms, crooked in the
crevices of stark hospital white
the bloom of tulips on fleece blanketing
like knobby, gnarly trunks of aged birch trees
that have learned to grow
parallel with each other
I was a pioneer, an experiment, you say,
round blue eyes over gold-rimmed glasses,
curls of hair faded into pale morning light,
paper-thin skin flushed with
the red of vessels –
They told me I would live five years
and I lived fifty.
They fixed my heart and now, finally, it is done.
Seeing you every morning was
the hardest and easiest thing I had to do.
The first day we met, you told me,
I am ready, with so much certainty—
the way a river always knows to trample
ashore the same muddy banks,
the way rain always runs its course
in the same divots
along the same streets
You asked me if you could see
your cat one more time,
or your grandchild
They will look for me when I’m gone,
serenely, withered hands folded into
the blossoms of another blanket
Several nights ago, I found myself clutching
the letters my grandfather wrote to me
twenty years ago, heavy purple on
wispy blue calligraphy paper
In the corner of a room, a light flickered,
my cat stared, curious and unblinking
My grandfather used to love cats.
Always drew me pictures of different tabbies,
signed his letters with a self-portrait of
his face underneath,
a bald head and square black glasses
I wonder if he was ready, too.
When we arrived at the temple,
they told us that his skin was still soft,
unburdened
That it meant he had died completely at peace.
But in ninety years of living,
he never told me about
the girl he once loved
You tell me one afternoon
about the man you love now
How he will be, is already, angry –
for not having enough time, for having to lose
you after finally finding
each other decades late
When I walk home that night,
the downpour is angry, a sky of
torrential, tearing rain,
the kind of storm
that splits branches from their trunks
I am also angry sometimes.
I am angry that we must lose
I am, every so often, caught in the whiplash –
for many mornings, you sat,
bright red & white & alive
in a quiet, sunlit room
A morning later you are gone:
infusion run out, heart tapped out,
lungs silent, bed empty
I wonder, briefly,
which blanket they will bury you with
I do not know if they cremate people
here like they do across the ocean,
together with the branches and lily blossoms
and calligraphy until there is nothing left
but fine grains
Until there is only a grandchild who,
years later, still looks for
what is already gone.
2025 National Hospitalist Day HM Voices Submission
Dr. Li
Dr. Li is an academic hospitalist at Grady Memorial Hospital and an assistant professor at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. She currently serves on the editorial board of Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine.