Issue 1 Draft 3

Affect
By Naeema Hopkins-Kotb
M2, Harvard Medical School
You believe with conviction that you cannot be helped.
It is my deepest conviction that I must help.
It seems we have reached an impasse.
You point to your big toe. It is inflamed the way
a stubborn balloon is inflated, and yet you do not feel
the pain of its rebellion, “Can you feel this?...
or this?” This is not where it hurts.
Your silence tells me you cannot point to your pain.
You hurt where I cannot see,
where I cannot palpate or auscultate or percuss,
where pills and prescriptions have ventured in vain.
It is hollow where you hurt, still your pain enshrouds you.
I was taught to open my questions, and I think it has allowed
you to see right through me. Your few words color the sharp
walls of the clinic room with a dusky, immovable blue-gray cloud.
I almost shiver.
I struggle to look for the sunlight in your words. I was taught to
grasp at the dangling loose thread of your motivation,
and show you how to pull at it until the fabric of your cloud
unravels to reveal the hope of sunrise that was always there.
I think we agree that you look for your hope of sunrise here,
during evening nights in clinic in front of names and faces
on badges and white coats of people who feel like me,
like maybe you can be helped,
like maybe you’re already healing.
Illustrations by Lillian Zhu
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