A love affair between portacath and patient

By Holly Suzanne Abel

The doctor slices my chest open.  

I am conscious, eyes pressed closed 

tighter than the blood pressure cuff  

that pulses around my right arm. 

With each slithering slice and tugging stitch, 

the surgeon sculpts your home six inches from my heart, 

scalpel chiseling tissue and fat  

into your new resting place.  

I warn new lovers about you, 

how your needle pressed into my chest  

will always embrace me closer  

than their arms ever could,  

how the medication you push through me  

leaves love notes in my veins,  

how I could not walk a straight line before I met you,  

how you are not temporary.  

And sometimes, they leave. 

They never blame you, but I see their eyes widen, 

considering your monopoly on my body,  

cringing as the nurse tenderly pierces my skin  

for the 68th time this year.  

Strangers’ eyes meet mine as we walk down the street, 

your body and mine pressed as close as their examining stares. 

Their curiosity lingers on my chest,  

but not in the way that most women grow accustomed to.  

The gum-snapping clerk at the gas station gawks:  

Uff da, what is going on there?  

I do not say that you are my lifesaver, 

that you cradle my illness in your silicone hands. 

Before you,  

I didn’t understand unconditional love. 

I understood love that didn’t share my hospital bed.  

I understood love that didn’t realize illness is a four-shouldered burden. 

I know you are not my forever;  

your lifespan is shorter than mine. After you will come another,   

each of you a reminder  

that I can never be alone.

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Holly Suzanne Abel (she/her) is a poet based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She writes in between graduate school, two jobs, a small business, and spending time with her pitbull. Holly's work focuses on disability and mental health as well as relationships with the self and others.