Ode to Checking My Shit after Ross Gay

by Therí Alyce Pickens

As I watch nurses
turn their noses up
and CNAs avoid
the conversation with words
never uttered out loud
and ideas only
vaguely gestured at
like they don’t know
what I mean
or I don’t know
what they mean
and, as doctors never ask,
but I tell them anyway,
I never think to withhold,
to play my vagues,
but rather watch
how color, texture, size
create this moment of recoil.
Sometimes one will admit
they’ve never heard such detail,
such self-knowledge,
with a straight face
like the years of therapy
paid off,
like the person harangued
for years to pay attention
in her body
finally got it right.
When I peer over the bowl
as though a microscope lay between us—
a set of lenses which

as at the ophthalmologist’s
tell me better or worse
or about the same—
I straighten my back
and curve my smile
several times a day

and watch the small islands
settle like Atlantis must have
housing whole worlds
of tiny organisms and the detritus
that used to be food
and sometimes still is.
I make sure to note
how I unload
these burdens
whether it takes the shape
where it now lives
in the S-bend
or if it is like it used to be
a scattered shot in the dark,
rushed to
and screaming with electricity
or if it feels empty
like when it used to come unbidden
into a bag. I relish
the candle doing its work
cleansing the air
setting fire to some evidence
that I lived
but not the moment of relief
to look back
at what I consumed
and let go
thinking maybe there’s something
worth savoring.