Leg Lengthening

by Rachel Marsom-Richmond

They push me towards the
operating room, where they
want to break my shins

down the middle. I’ll be in
a wheelchair for months,
while bone grows back slowly,

one millimeter a day,
helped by the wires and pins

sticking out of my skin.

I always stood out in a crowd
at three and a half feet tall. I
wanted to be normal for years,

but now on the stretcher, cloaked
in crispy paper, I just can’t.
I’m too afraid to grow.

Waiting Room

by Rachel Marsom-Richmond

After the world becomes a hospital,
a content, controlled safehouse,

when men, women, children
live in every sense enlightened,

in a rush for nothing, a
moving outward, surrounded—

as when in your elderly years the
friendly neighborhood ladies so obviously

secure were only a few blocks away,
flaunting tied-back curtains, open doors—

everyone talked to them, everyone
hugged them every day, everyone watched

their routine of predictability—as
you all say when the day ends

at last, as you hide from the burst of moon,
as we are not here, we give up, and we are leaving.