Varun Shetty
O

It is a circle, a cipher,
the opposite of something.

It is formed by an old man’s lips
parted midbreath.

It is an absence
held in the valley of his mouth.

It is unmoved
even with an endotracheal tube,

even with bile and blood,
it lives on

despite my Ambu bag
raising his chest like a tide.

It is not the monitor beeping
or the oxygen hissing.

It pays no heed to the palms on his chest
cracking his ribs.

It is untouched
by 200 joules of electricity.

It is a protest
of the space outside it.

It is not the darkness
of the crevice that carries a sparrow’s nest.

There,
the world is a song
and only song.

---

Varun U. Shetty is a writer and critical care physician. He grew up in Mumbai and lives with his partners in Shaker Heights, Ohio. His work has appeared or forthcoming in Five South, Hobart, Healing Muse, Complete Sentence, Olney Magazine, and others. Varun Shetty won the 2022 F. Sean Hodge Prize for Poetry in Medicine. You can read more about him at varunushetty.com.

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