Sept. 3, 2023
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The Recovery Room
By Gaia Thomas
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The Recovery Room
By Gaia Thomas
The heart is something aloof. Wind has given the heart asylum, and it is in a room removed. Heart writes with notebook against her knees. Where are the others? Come come. Does everyone /including the soul/ have to wait outside the operating room? When I came to she was wrapped around me like a friendly boa constrictor. Are you alright? Are you alright? My heart was steady but mute. And at this moment 50 feet in the air a napkin floats by. We will reach the heart by tiny paper flying carpet.
Hospitality has been revoked: you may not make it home. The window would like me to know that it is larger than my body. Don’t stay with those who minimize your pain.
The fronds of the pine look like they’re flipping off the storm. In my experience, she doesn’t write when she’s elsewhere. She doesn’t write to me. Maybe because anger was forbidden in our house. Never ignore a soldier coming home from war. Everything I cannot speak I will consume. She gave them her sleep.
The bunny ears he tied gently, and my feet he set down upon the tracks of light. No time to nest in the vines, to follow the spindle of blue bridge out over the moor. In the dark I cannot walk a straight line. I stumble, feeling the faces of other sleepers. Late into the night I coin confessions to hoist her from the river floor.
Gaia Thomas
Gaia Thomas is a disabled poet living in Alameda, CA. She has presented on crip poetics at UPenn and Michigan State University. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, and will be featured in the upcoming sequel to Beauty is a Verb. Her manuscript, Serotine, was a finalist for the Carolyn Bush Award.
Image description: Woman with pale skin and brown eyes looks at the camera intently. She holds her left hand up to her chin; her index finger is resting on her cheek. Her brown hair is pushed to one side. She wears a striped shirt with barely visible small gold dots.