Surfacing

I’ve never seen a whale
Do not be fooled by strangers or loved ones
who say keep looking or this year will be different
so I scan, squint into the horizon
but waves mask spouts in high winds and
rocks are not large mammals in the sea
but you know they’re out there
like cells the doctors missed
when you slid beneath their scopes
and held your breath
hoping all of you
not just the spots
will still be seen.

Blood Journey

I once dove into blood
like rivers on a summer’s day,
rafted on corpuscles, waved
to leukocytes, splashed platelets
that collected like seals on my
shores of everything packed
inside one tube they said
was complete.
Complete Blood Count
or CBC,
2000 this
150 that,
where I will drown one day
between the highs and the lows
of fluctuating
but measured tides.

Anemia

They told my mother I could die.
It could be cancer she said they said.
My blood was tired, dropping iron.
I have no memory of this, I wasn’t even two
but imagine the doctors’ white coats against
green walls, UCLA Children’s Hospital 1st floor,
my mother sitting on metal folding chair,
my father’s hands kneading her shoulders,
saying don’t worry she will be fine.
Of course I didn’t die.
After four days my blood woke up,
molecules clung, hematocrit rose.
I went home to beef and spinach
and eggs. To my mother saying,
Eat this, not that!
Until years later, my hands on my
mother’s bony shoulders, St. Agnes, 5th floor
saying, Please mom, eat this, drink that!
Her own blood
oh, so tired.

Deborah Meltvedt is a recently retired Medical Science teacher who lives in Sacramento, California with her husband Rick and their cat, Anchovy Jack. Deborah has been published in local literary anthologies and in the Creative Non-Fiction Anthology What I Didn’t Know: True Stories of Becoming a Teacher. Her first book of poetry Becoming a Woman was published last year.