Poem by Yasmin Jajarmi (c2018), Photograph by Karen Ngo (c2018)

ask for me and you shall receive, Forgiveness told me one afternoon,
but seek me
in that other holy place: in your patient
whose body is the temple;
find me there—
and after, when you have peered up,
through the astrologist’s telescope,
witnessed every constellation kiss,
and still missed his Cancer—
after, when you have helped her birth a still-born still-heaven child,
when you notice medicine never birthed you whole either,
when you notice medicine did not birth you
in a hospital or a water bath,
but in an ivory tower—
jump, choose Camelot
and ask that I am mixed in the river-rime
ask for me to stay an afternoon
to remind you of your pulse,
and i’ll remind you: landmark first, then press,
count: brach-ial brach-ial
break-heal break-heal,
break heal: look,
look at how your pulse fills its own cracks.