anastomosis

two years ago
they catheterized me
and found three roads closed,
a heart running
on detours and luck

the doctor who’d ran the tube into me
saw little h o p e
not even a little light
under a door
you aren’t sure anyone should even try to open

then Dr. Almoghrabi walked in
and he didn’t bring hope —
hope is what you bring when you don’t know. when you aren’t sure.
he brought the other thing,
the thing I still don’t have a name for

they borrowed road from elsewhere in me
and paved it around the wreck,
stitched old to new —
the surgeons call that joining anastomosis,
which sounds like a Welsh saint
or something you’d catch from a library book,
but it only means
two things never meant to touch
agreeing to carry the same blood

I told him then:
october sixteenth is yours now.
forever. always.
so far the calendar hasn’t t argued

recovery was no montage.
The theme from Rocky doesn’t play in the background when they’ve cracked open your sternum
and sewed you back up
there’s just a pillow I hugged to cough,
a hallway I walked circles around like it had wronged me,
and so many mornings
where the only accomplishment
was the morning

there is no thank you
big enough
for every day after
the day you were supposed to stop
so today I’ll drive down to KU
with a box of sweet things
and a card that tries anyway,
in handwriting far too small for it

and he’ll read it in a minute,
maybe less,
set it down by the coffee,
and scrub back in
for somebody else’s
little hope