The water calls my name but it is an old name
Swallowing, it asks for bones I do not have
For scraps of membrane, fibre, tendons, all I have shed
In bloodied velvet, in circles of rags, ripped and split
Again, calling, lips tightening, white tongue wagging
Steam rising from between its gums
Dark against the basalt stained.
Brianna Cheng
Brianna Cheng is a writer and student from Canada. She completed a narrative medicine fellowship at Concordia University, Quebec. Her prose and poetry have appeared in Intima: a Journal of Narrative Medicine, Journal of General Internal Medicine: The Living Hand, CMAJ Blogs, Radix, Families, Systems & Health, Palette, and is forthcoming in Breathe. She was previously a Humanities Editor for the McGill Journal of Medicine and first reader for WTAW Press.
