Ultrasound with Bird
Reclining on a chair,
white paper crunches as I move.
On the ceiling a painting of trees,
leaves reaching towards blue sky.
The sonographer squeezes warm gel
out of a bottle and spreads it
onto my throat, my clavicle, under my ears.
There are an estimated 600 lymph nodes
in our body, 200 in the neck.
Lymph travels in a single direction,
through vessels and valves that act as gates.
Her hand suspended above me,
she snaps photos to collect in my file,
as impressionist strokes of black,
white and gray form on the screen.
My breathing slows in the stagnant air.
I’ll be back in a few, she says.
In the silence that ensues, I hover—
suspended among tree, sky, exam room—
as a bird pauses
on the branch above my head.
Amy de Rouvray is an emerging French-American poet, currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University while raising three children. She is a recipient of the SFSU William Dickey Fellowship in Poetry, Assistant Poetry Editor at Fourteen Hills literary magazine, and a cancer survivor. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in New American Writing, Empty House Press, Last Syllable, and elsewhere. Her work was finalist for the Kenyon Review Poetry Contest and the Rhonda Gail Williford Poetry Prize, and recently named an Honorable Mention in the Art of Unity Literary Award.
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