New Publication: Palimpsest in The Examined Life Journal, Issue 13

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I’m honored to share that my poem “Palimpsest” appears in Issue 13 of The Examined Life Journal, a publication dedicated to the intersection of medicine, the human body, and the stories we carry within it.

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“Palimpsest” is one of my most intimate emergency medicine poems, a meditation on the fragile ways our work is written into us and then washed away. It lives alongside powerful narrative medicine pieces in this issue, and I’m grateful for the editors’ care.

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The issue is now available through the University of Iowa’s online store: The Examined Life Journal – Issue 13​

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Palimpsest

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Originally published in The Examined Life Journal, Issue 13 (Fall 2025)

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The body is written in disappearing ink,
a script too delicate to hold,
spooling beneath skin too thin to keep its shape.
We read it with our hands,
pressing for the pulse,
listening for the whispered rhythm beneath ribs.

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Every patient is a page already turning,
names smudged at the edges,
the story unraveling before the final word is set.
I trace the lines of a heart that once beat steady,
press my palm to a forehead cooling to silence,
watch the ink fade before I can commit it to memory.

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There is no permanence here.
Only the hum of the fluorescent lights,
the static of monitors translating breath into numbers,
and the thin red signatures of blood threading through gauze,
as if we could bind what is already unraveling.

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I have seen breath fold itself back into the dark,
lungs fluttering like pages caught in wind.
I have pressed down on a chest
as if pushing hard enough could hold the story in place,
could keep the ink from running,
could stop the edges from curling into fire.

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Sometimes it works.
The pulse stutters, then returns,
a reluctant second act.
A gasp, a cough, a name rasped from cracked lips.
We call it saving a life,
but it is only pressing pause,
only buying space for the next chapter to write itself.

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Other times, the line stills, the paper burns to white.
There is no scream, no flash—
just the quiet sigh of something closing,
the slow erasure of heat from skin.
The room lets go before we do.

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I step back, wash my hands,
feel the ink slip from my skin,
watch the water spiral down the drain.
No permanence.
No proof.
Only the faint scent of antiseptic
and the echo of a name
I will forget by morning.

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I turn.
A new page waits.

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