Only Provisional
by
Rachael Lynn Nevins
Rachael Nevins’s poetry, essays, and book reviews have appeared in Brooklyn Poets Anthology, Literary Mama, Hazlitt, the Ploughshares blog, and elsewhere, as well as in her newsletter, The Variegated Life. She expects to complete her degree in Library and Information Studies at Queens College of the City University of New York in spring 2023. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
from Only Provisional
Anesthesia (3/1/18)
I want to believe, if not in heaven,
then that even in death, something of life remains—
that, like the grass, I will still feel the sunshine,
the caress of the rain.
When I walked into the surgical theater,
I gave my name and birthdate to the doctors and assistants
and lay down on the table
where warn blankets covered me and a mask was placed over my face,
and a nurse recited Goodnight Moon until there was nothing
so total I didn’t even see myself
slip into it.
