Brooke Stanicki
For Breonna Taylor, A Fellow EMT
“There is no COVID-19”, a patient said.
As we rode, sirens blaring.
He grasped at my eyes
But found no wool for him to pull
How lucky am I,
I got to be his usher
Show him past the truck of bodies
Push his stretcher to the door.
Once full of blank certainty
His eyes were colored in,
Not with bright knowledge
But with the dark shade of the truth.
They got no such luxury.
No infinite morgue truck
Of lifeless black bodies
To bring the country to its knees.
They couldn’t argue any longer
So they spray-painted our eyes
And now we cannot avoid
The dark shade of the truth.
And now we cannot avoid the dark shade of the truth.
—Submitted on 06/07/2020
Brooke Stanicki is a pre-medical student at Johns Hopkins University. She works as an EMT in New Jersey. In her spare time, between studying and fencing as a varsity athlete for JHU, she writes fiction and poetry.
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