Voice

It is raw.
Purpled and chafed thin,
worn and warned. It denotes
mere meemies before white coats:
++++++++another Medicaid queen to diagnose.

It is tight.
Squeezed fingers dig
with nails that pierce the silence
and trust that whatever pain I’m in,
++++++++it’s better than treatment in this skin.

It is sore.
It has hollered and howled,
generations of harvests and fibroids
and is now a high-pitched white noise—
++++++++bloody murder into the void.

It is silent.
On a scale of one to ten,
pain of the physical in comparison
is why I’m assumed a strong specimen
++++++++only for use by modern medicine.

It is choked.
The rooftops quiet.
The passive despite my aggressive fades
when a 62 cents on the dollar doctor of a deeper shade
++++++++enters, eyes knowing, offers me aid.

It is loosed.
Bobs and surfaces, a whisper.
Muscles relax, once primed on crinkly crepe,
Incisors lift from a well of familiar metallic taste,
++++Release and fill with the hope of leveled landscape.

It is scratched.
Matched in timbre and volume,
the view clear from both sides,
less what I am, more what can heal—a new paradigm
++++++++the sanitized room shifts for the first time.

A lineage of vocal cords paralyzed.
Recovery possible for the traumatized
when my voice is represented and recognized.

Do the Math

I waste his important time. He has better lives to save. A shiny stethoscope with black hosing is pulled from around a thick, well-educated neck. A short but mighty staff, it swings casually in his hand as he speaks. Gray eyes lock matching tiles of the same shade behind me, above my head, to a wall with no tears. His voice is flat. “We can harvest his organs if we act quickly. At least some good can come from all of this.”

I muster all of my two-year, basic college classes and reply with shaky resolve. “I just need to talk to my parents first.”

His eye roll and sigh are quick but calculated. Was this doctor like this when they treated him? “In these cases, this amount of traumatic brain damage almost certainly means no recovery.”

He leaves me with a ticking clock, a plug, and a math problem. But—

gang is not the sum
when bullet plus a brown face
subtracts my brother

Tanasha Martin now resides in Illinois, but was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. The pieces submitted to Please See Me derive from personal experience. Her published works include Fieldstone Review’s Identities: “Paper or Plastic”; Don’t Die Press’ Angry: “No Mercy”; Kissing Dynamite Press’ PUNK Anthology: “In Plain Sight”; Nightingale & Sparrow Magazine’s: Melody: “Groove” (nominated for Best of the Net); The Pine Hills Review’s: Unicorns Special: “Hope for Flint”; The Writing Journey’s Reasons for Hope: “Peer,” “Digital Footprint,” and “Once More, With Feeling”; Human: An Exploration of What it Means (online): “Touched,” “Personal Bubble,” and “All Smiles,” and Near Myths: “A Tale with No Fairies,” “The Scant Structure Slayers,”and “Everglow.” These include short stories, flash fiction, and narrative poetry pieces in the areas of speculative fiction, science fiction, and fantasy, with themes based on the possible outcomes of current events. Additional works at tanashamartinwrites.wordpress.com.

Photo by Rhonda Nunn