Before Everything

Half my face hangs 
from rearview mirrors and
litters the ground like torn 
butterfly wings
Without it, I turn away from the
girl in the mirror –
her face a dim moon

Everyday it gets worse, my patient gasps – 
his voice a mist that drifts through 
the wound in his neck
His arms and legs are too feeble
to escape the body’s prison
I whisper encouragement but think
I’d rather die 

Last year, before everything,
flies crawled out of the wall and 
died in lazy heaps 
Everyday more appeared
I’ve never been one to read the signs
but these days, handfuls 
of my hair carpet 
the bathroom floor 

To think –
I used to carry a notebook and scribble 
fanciful phrases I overheard 
on the radio or in line at
the grocery store and 
weave those words into poems

Now, I’m stranded on 
the other side of nowhere, 

       finding a new way 
to grieve 

The way my body 
attacked my liver
and left me round 
faced and bereft 
of empathy

The way I can’t change things 
When a young man’s 
heart convulses and quivers
and he begs Don’t let me die 
I pat his hand 
but promise nothing

The way it’s taken me this long to realize
I don’t write the endings
The young mother slips easily
into death, like going 
for a swim, 
but the drunk 
burns the house down 
and walks away

The way my life contracts 
to the tip of the needle 
that pricks my forearm each week
while inked butterflies shiver 
on the back of the phlebotomist’s hands

Stories I No Longer Tell

I know which stories will impress 
friends over dinner. 
I might tell you about the pregnant girl 
who was shot in the head 
all those years ago in a Walmart parking lot, 
and the way her husband wailed when I
tracked him down in 
Fallujah and told him the news
on a crackling line.
Don’t worry, it ended happily enough. 
She learned to walk again and the baby 
survived. 
She only occasionally uses a word like milk 
when she means to say bird. 
People always demand
tell me the worst thing you’ve ever seen,
so sometimes I tell them about the car 
filled with teens who thought they could fly 
and left pieces of their bodies 
in the trees instead. 
Or of the woman who delivered her 
intestines like a baby
and the way her husband
gazed at her with both love
and disgust. 
Occasionally, I’ll mention the mother 
who shot herself in the mouth and arrived 
in my trauma room with her eye 
dangling against her cheek. 
Her young son found her but
she couldn’t be saved. 

I’m too tired for stories now. 

Each day spins tales of pregnant women 
who drown in clotted lungs and leave 
their babies behind.
It’s almost boring when patients gasp
Is it too late to get the shot?
Then I see their smiles on 
Facebook and the kids 
in their profile pictures, 
and I must not 
be numb enough yet, 
because it all still 
makes me feel sick. 
My children ask me to 
stop talking about work.
No one cares about Covid anymore Mom
my oldest mumbles.
And it’s true. 
So today, I’ll tell them a story about
our dog who slipped his lead and galloped
through the stream behind our house. 
Mud clung to his white fur and he rolled
in the grass when I tried to wash his paws.
But I couldn’t stay angry 
when cedar scented the air 
and the trees wore crowns of fire.

Rachel Mallalieu is an emergency physician and mother of five. She writes poetry in her spare time. Her recent work is featured in Blood and Thunder, Haunted Waters Press, Pulse, Nelle, Entropy, Anti-Heroin Chic and Rattle.