Kristin LaFollette

Occupied

I’ve never thought of myself as calm—

Once, a nurse carefully removed
an IV from my arm and   held pressure,
but once the gauze was released,
the bloodletting began and there

weren’t even enough of us to stop the flood—

Things are always as bad as I think they will be.

I am aware of the expanding and contracting
behind my breastbone in the same way a
person with a leak puts a bucket under it—

Once the blood-flowers begin to form,
there’s only so much time to stop the
bruising from becoming a map of
impulse & germinating seed—

The point is that I only feel a sense of
quiet in the bodies of others,
my own mouth made from
gun smoke
& suture,

destined only to wound and

Kristin LaFollette (Twitter: @k_lafollette03) is a writer, artist, and photographer. She is the author of the full-length poetry collection Hematology (winner of the 2021 Harbor Editions Laureate Prize, selected by Missouri Poet Laureate Karen Craigo) and the chapbook Body Parts (winner of the 2017 GFT Press Chapbook Contest). She is a professor at the University of Southern Indiana and serves as the Art Editor at Mud Season Review. Her favorite sweet is chocolate chip ice cream.

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