Blinders Up

by Kate Girdhar

Image source: Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, 14th Ed. (1997).

The power of suggestion

twists its way around

my bones,

whispers up my spine

(as if it were mine)

That earworm of a

song ties itself

down around

my tibia and

tugs.

The more I know

the worse I see—

every stained-glass

illumination

just a funhouse

mirror,

deflecting

everything right back at me.

Don’t you hear it, delighting

in my doubt?

What freedom in those

blacked out bars—

what a sad

excuse for anonymity

I’ve always thought.

Perhaps not at all for

privacy

but simply so they cannot

see.

Obliterating need and means and

temptation.

A looker who is this sentence’s

subject

but ever the object of

phrase.

Your chosen player is judge—

so keep on that

amorphous cape

(no peeking)

Paper gowns precluded [for us]

until this buzzy haze

subsides.

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Kate Girdhar is a third-year medical student at the UTCOMLS.

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