Today's poem is by Kara van de Graaf

Diagnosis
       

If you don't think
all language is a kind
of apology, how do you
explain the little quaver
I hear in the voice
of my doctor
when he tells me
my hair won't ever
come back? That
the slow scrape
of time over the body
sheared off that territory
long ago. What's gone
is gone. And with words
he forms slowly
he wants to convince me
that he knows anything
about the traffic signals
of my brain, the blinks
on and off by whatever
helms me, whatever decides
what we can afford
to grow. Between
each syllable I feel
a ghost, gelatin-clear,
haunting the sound
of his sorry, sense his
true distance from me
though I could touch him
right now. And you
feel it too, a low
sibilance in my speech
like a hidden frequency
repeating I'm sorry,
I'm sorry, I know I can't
ever reach you.

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Copyright © 2023 Kara van de Graaf All rights reserved
from Southern Indiana Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission