By Angela Chaidez Vincent
I waited
so long. But just as it is strange to think of Romans
as women, so it is strange to think of a surgeon as a man
without a hidden face. I used to draw plans
to change
Sizzlers to surgery rooms. Away with the searing of meat
to make way for the visceral dreamers. My violet nail slid down
the building code so patients could drowse,
then wake
one ache softer. Somewhere in some office, an engineer (yours)
stares into her ceiling of lay-in tiles precisely two by four feet,
wonderful for estimating expanse of interior
spaces. Granted,
it may have been the drugs, but once I stared deeply into a field
of five o’clock shadow, a galaxy of coarse growth converging
on the exact place I might have kissed
if I were more
than a root canal. Would you like to see the nerve?
he asked. There, sweet angel hair. An omen. Silent for years
beside the river of everything I’ve ever said.
Might have kissed
should have been: someone wonderful should. It’s long past
late. What I wished, deep down: helmets dropping
to the ground. What I wanted
was a Roman.
ANGELA CHAIDEZ VINCENT writes poetry and fiction and has a background in the fields of engineering and computer science. Her debut poetry collection, Arena Glow, is forthcoming from Tourane Press. She lives in Fresno, California.
Art by Kathleen Quaintance
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